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Who really said it

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men

Not Leonardo da Vinci — from a 1901 novel about him Dmitri Merezhkovsky 1865–1941 · Russian symbolist novelist & religious philosopher
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Leonardo never wrote or spoke this. The words come from Dmitri Merezhkovsky’s 1901 historical novel The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (Russian original 1900–1901; English trans. Herbert Trench, 1902), where they appear as third-person hearsay in the fictional diary of Leonardo’s apprentice Giovanni Boltraffio — then got reworded into the first person and popularized on quote-cards through Jon Wynne-Tyson’s 1985 animal-rights anthology. Leonardo may genuinely have been a vegetarian, but this eloquent sentence is a novelist’s invention.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men” Dmitri Merezhkovsky, The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (trans. Herbert Trench, 1902) — a fictional line often misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Leonardo da Vinci. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Dmitri Merezhkovsky — Russian symbolist novelist, poet & nine-time Nobel nominee. Theme: "I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Real source
The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci
Author
Dmitri Merezhkovsky — historical novel, 1900–1901 (Russian)
Translation
Herbert Trench, 1902 (English; Putnam)
Spoken by
Not Leonardo — a fictional apprentice’s diary entry

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.

This first-person ‘quote’ is a reworking of a third-person passage in Merezhkovsky’s novel, in which the apprentice Boltraffio’s fictional diary reports that Leonardo “from an early age … has abjured meat” and foresaw a time when men “will think on the murder of animals as now they think on the murder of men.” No such words appear in Leonardo’s own notebooks.

Read the novel on the Internet Archive (a later, c. 1912, Putnam printing of the 1902 Trench translation)

How we traced it

  • The International Vegetarian Union’s history site flags the line as “falsely attributed,” tracing it to Merezhkovsky’s novel and to Jon Wynne-Tyson’s 1985 anthology The Extended Circle, which mixed up the sources.
  • The words come from Dmitri Merezhkovsky’s The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (trans. Herbert Trench, 1902; the linked Internet Archive scan is a later, c. 1912, Putnam printing) — a work of historical fiction, not a record of anything Leonardo wrote.
  • A detailed review of the vegetarianism question concludes the quote is fabricated — Merezhkovsky put it in the fictional diary of apprentice Boltraffio — and states flatly that “Leonardo never said these words.”

The underlying novel — Merezhkovsky’s Russian original (1900–1901) and Herbert Trench’s English translation (1902) — is old enough to be public domain. But the first-person line that circulates today is a later paraphrase that does not match the novel’s actual third-person wording, so its precise published origin is not pinned; and it is in any case not a genuine Leonardo text. We assert no clean copyright status for the popular wording.

Fact-check

A fictional Leonardo, mistaken for the real one

This is one of the most-shared ‘vegetarian Leonardo’ quotes on the internet — and it is not his. It began as a novelist’s invention and reached quote-cards by way of a well-meaning anthology’s mistake.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Misattributed

Neither this sentence nor these ideas-in-these-words appear anywhere in Leonardo’s notebooks or in the standard collections of his writings. A close study of the vegetarianism claim states plainly that “Leonardo never said these words.”

Dmitri Merezhkovsky’s novel (1901) Fiction

The line derives from The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, where the Russian novelist put it in the fictional diary of Leonardo’s apprentice Giovanni Boltraffio — historical fiction, not testimony.

Jon Wynne-Tyson’s anthology (1985) The mix-up

According to the International Vegetarian Union, the quote entered animal-rights literature through The Extended Circle: A Commonplace Book of Animal Rights, which lifted the fictional passage and credited it to the real Leonardo.

Leonardo may well have been a vegetarian — a 1515 letter by Andrea Corsali compares Hindus who harm no living thing to “our Leonardo da Vinci” — but this eloquent sentence was written about him by a 20th-century novelist, not by him.

Context

Why it feels so convincingly his

Leonardo’s notebooks brim with reverence for life, and contemporaries reported that he bought caged birds simply to set them free. That real sensibility is exactly why a beautifully phrased anti-cruelty prophecy feels so plausibly his — and why it has been repeated for over a century as if it were.

But feeling right is not the same as being genuine. The sentence was composed around 1900 by Dmitri Merezhkovsky, a Russian symbolist reimagining Leonardo for a modern age. It tells us more about turn-of-the-century animal ethics than about the Renaissance mind it is put in the mouth of.

A novelist’s imagined Leonardo, mistaken for the real one.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (full text)archive.org

Herbert Trench’s English translation of Merezhkovsky’s novel — the true source of the line.
Leonardo da Vinci and Vegetarianismivu.org

International Vegetarian Union history essay documenting the false attribution and the Wynne-Tyson anthology error.
Was Leonardo a Vegetarian?vangoghgenova.it

Detailed review confirming the quote is fictional and weighing the real (circumstantial) evidence for his vegetarianism.
Was Leonardo da Vinci Vegan?bitesizevegan.org

History-of-veganism piece explaining the quote was accidentally misattributed and comes from Merezhkovsky’s fiction.
Animal Rights: A History — Leonardo da Vincithinkdifferentlyaboutsheep.weebly.com

Notes the quotation comes from Merezhkovsky’s novel, translated into English in 1902, while affirming Leonardo’s vegetarianism.

The real author of the words

Dmitri Merezhkovsky

Dmitri Merezhkovsky

1865–1941 · Russian symbolist novelist, poet & nine-time Nobel nominee

Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky was a leading figure of the Russian Symbolist movement and a co-founder of Russian religious-philosophical thought. His best-known work is the trilogy Christ and Antichrist, whose second volume — a richly imagined life of Leonardo — was translated into English as The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci and became a European bestseller. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature repeatedly, and it is his fictional Leonardo, not the historical one, who speaks the famous vegetarian prophecy.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Dmitri Merezhkovsky, The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Herbert Trench (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902) — the fictional source of the line; misattribution traced by the International Vegetarian Union to Jon Wynne-Tyson’s The Extended Circle: A Commonplace Book of Animal Rights (1985).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-have-from-an-early-age-abjured-the-use-of-meat-and-the

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