Michelangelo Quotes
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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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Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.
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I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
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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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Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.
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If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.
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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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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.
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I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.
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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
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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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In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.
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Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.
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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.
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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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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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One paints with one's head, not one's hand.
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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.
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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.
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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 well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
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No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
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Nature did all things well.