Michelangelo Quotes
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If people knew how hard I worked at my art, they would not consider me a genius.
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A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.
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I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is no tongue to speak his eulogy; Too brightly burned his splendour 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 hers refused to ope. Ungrateful land, to its own injury Nurse of his fate! 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.
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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.
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I am always learning.
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Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?
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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.
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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?
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I am no artist - please come and help me.
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If the wine is not good, then throw it out!
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An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.
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He who follows another will never overtake him.
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A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
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After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.
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Do you know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who are not?
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I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.
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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.