Michelangelo Quotes
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I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
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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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Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.
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I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.
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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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Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.
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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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The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
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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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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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One paints with one's head, not one's hand.
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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
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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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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 is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.
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I am no artist - please come and help me.
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If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.
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Nature did all things well.
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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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No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
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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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Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
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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 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.