Michelangelo Quotations

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.

The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.

Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.

The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.

Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all.

I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

One paints with one's head, not one's hand.

If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

Nature did all things well

A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art - perfection

And still I am learning.

I couldn't give you something mediocre even if that's all you asked for.

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.

Forgiveness is divine, but never pay pull price for late pizza.

I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.

True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.

What one has most to work and struggle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount of labour and sweat in such a way that it may afterward appear, however much it was laboured upon, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not.

My beard towards heaven, I feel my nape support / The back of my head, I grow the breast of a harpy / And my brush as it drips continually / Upon my face, makes it a gorgeous floor.

Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.

No great work of art is ever finished.

Let it be enough for you to have bread and live virtuously and poorly like Christ, as I do here. I live meanly and don't bother about life or honor ... and I live with the greatest toil and a thousand worries. It is now about 15 years since I had a happy hour.

The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

The great tragedy of life is not that people set their sights too high and fail to achieve their goals but that they set their sights too low and do.

A good sculpture can be rolled downhill without breaking.

It is not sufficient merely to be a great master in painting and very wise, but I think that it is necessary for the painter to be very moral in his mode of life, or even, if such were possible, a saint, so that the Holy Spirit may inspire his intellect.

If the wine is not good, then throw it out!

I am no artist - please come and help me.

As when, O lady mine, With chiselled touch The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows.

Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!

There is no tongue to speak his eulogy; Too brightly burned his splendor for our eyes; Far easier to condemn his injurers, Than for the tongue to reach his smallest worth, He to the realms of sinfulness came down, To teach mankind, ascending then to God, Heaven unbarred to him her lofty gates, To whom his country heres refused to ope. Ungrateful land! Well, too, does this instruct That greatest ills fall to the perfectest. And, midst a thousand proofs, let this suffice- That, as his exile had no parallel, So never was there man more great than he.

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.

Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.

It is better decoration when, in painting, some monstrosity is introduced for variety and a relaxation of the senses and to attract the attention of mortal eyes, which at times desire to see that which they have never seen...

I am always learning.

I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.

I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone, While pain and guilt still linger here below, Blindness and numbness--these please me alone; Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.

Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.

Beauty depends on purpose. It is in the elements best suited to their purpose or aim that beauty shines forth most strongly.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.

Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.

Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle

Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.

Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.

I am still learning. (at age 87)

Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.

So now, from this mad passion Which made me take art for an idol and a king I have learnt the burden of error that it bore And what misfortune springs from man's desire... The world's frivolities have robbed me of the time That I was given for reflecting upon God.

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.

Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.

There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.

And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.

The greatest risk to man is not that he aims to high and misses, but that he aims to low and hits.

I dare affirm that any artist... who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent.

The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures.

Can't you see the angel imprisoned in the block of stone trying to get out? I am trying to free him

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?

Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to ought that doth time depend

You must know that I am, of all men who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I behold someone who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him; and then I give myself up to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but wholly his.

If I am more alive because love burns and chars me, as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation, it's that he who lays me low is my salvation, and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.

A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.

If people knew how hard I worked at my art, they would not consider me a genius.

Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.