Leonardo da Vinci Quote: Nature appears to have been the cruel...

Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals.

Select Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci

Nature being capricious and taking pleasure in creating and producing a continuous sucession of lives and forms because she knows that they serve to increase her terrestrial substance, is more ready and swift in her creating than time is in destroying, and therefore she has ordained that many animals shall serve as food one for the other; and as this does not satisfy her desire she sends forth frequently certain noisome and pestilential vapours and continual plagues upon the vast accumulations and herds of animals and especially upon human beings who increase very rapidly because other animals do not feed upon them.

— Leonardo da Vinci

Source: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci