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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
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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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I am no artist - please come and help me.
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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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A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
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I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.
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I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.
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Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.
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Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
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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.
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The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
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Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.
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Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
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Nature did all things well.
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Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
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Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
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If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
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The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
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Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!
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If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.