"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time."
— Leonardo da Vinci
In Rivers The Water That You
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
About this quote
This aphorism appears in Leonardo's notebooks, likely from the 1490s or early 1500s, when he was engaged in both scientific and artistic work in Milan and Florence. The river metaphor is characteristic of Leonardo's wider fascination with water — he devoted entire sections of his notebooks to the movement and properties of water — and here he turns that study toward philosophy, using the image to capture the perpetual renewal of the present moment between an irrecoverable past and an unknowable future.
Source
Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
