Michelangelo quotes

An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

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.

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

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.

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

Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.

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

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.

When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said, "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David.

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

The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.

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.

Do not be concerned that you might set a target too high and fail. Be concerned that you will set it too low and succeed.

Genius is eternal patience.

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.

Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.

And still I am learning.

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

To know each other is the best way to understand each other. To understand each other is the only way to love each other.

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

However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.

The mind, the soul, becomes ennobled by the endeavour to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after perfection is striving for something devine.

I am always learning.

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.

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

I serve for the love of God and in Him have all my hope.

As you give out, so shall you receive.

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

Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.

Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle

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

Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.

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

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

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.

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?

Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.

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

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.

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.

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.

I am no artist - please come and help me.

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

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.

Nature did all things well

The hand that follows intellect can achieve.

Your greatness is measured by your horizons.

Do you know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who are not?

Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.

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

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

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

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

No great work of art is ever finished.

I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.

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.

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

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

He who follows another will never overtake him

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.

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

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.

No one has mastery, Before he is at the end, Of his art and his life.

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

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

Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.

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

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

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.

Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty.

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.

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.

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.

I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.

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

He who does not master the nude cannot understand the principles of architecture.

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.

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

Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

Genius is infinite painstaking.

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

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

To touch is to give life.

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

Patience is eternal genius

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

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?

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.

How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

I am still learning. (at age 87)

Critique by creating.

Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your masterpiece, Your Life.

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

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

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

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

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

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

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

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.

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.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

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.

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

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

Already at sixteen, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms: one spiritual, the other earthly.

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

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Serene I fold my hands and wait.

Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.

A good sculpture can be rolled downhill without breaking.

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

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

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.

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

So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.

I criticise by creation, not by finding fault.

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.