Michelangelo Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
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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.
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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.
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To know each other is the best way to understand each other. To understand each other is the only way to love each other.
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True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.
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I am still learning. (at age 87)
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Whenever a great painter... does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true.
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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.
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Your greatness is measured by your horizons.
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A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.
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There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.
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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.
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Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.
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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?
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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.
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The hand that follows intellect can achieve.
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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.
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The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows.
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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.
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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.
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Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.
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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.
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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.
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Critique by creating.