Michelangelo Quotes
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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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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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A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
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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.
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I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.
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Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
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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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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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I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.
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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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The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
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Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.
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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 true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
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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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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.
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It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
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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.
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Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
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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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Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
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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.