Top 100 Michelangelo Quotes
#1. I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.
Michelangelo
#2. I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
Michelangelo
#4. The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
Michelangelo
#5. 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.
Michelangelo
#6. An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.
Michelangelo
#7. Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
Michelangelo
#8. Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.
Michelangelo
#9. I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.
Michelangelo
#10. 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.
Michelangelo
#11. Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.
Michelangelo
#12. Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.
Michelangelo
#13. An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.
Michelangelo
#14. 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.
Michelangelo
#15. 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.
Michelangelo
#16. Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.
Michelangelo
#17. The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
Michelangelo
#18. Already at sixteen, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms: one spiritual, the other earthly.
Michelangelo
#19. A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.
Michelangelo
#20. The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture ... Sometimes ... it seems to me that ... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.
Michelangelo
#22. One paints with one's head, not one's hand.
Michelangelo
#24. Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.
Michelangelo
#25. I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ.
Michelangelo
#26. True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.
Michelangelo
#27. If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures.
Michelangelo
#28. If the wine is not good, then throw it out!
Michelangelo
#29. I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.
Michelangelo
#30. Beauty depends on purpose. It is in the elements best suited to their purpose or aim that beauty shines forth most strongly.
Michelangelo
#31. Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of ...
Michelangelo
#32. Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.
Michelangelo
#34. Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.
Michelangelo
#35. A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.
Michelangelo
#36. 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.
Michelangelo
#37. Can't you see the angel imprisoned in the block of stone trying to get out? I am trying to free him
Michelangelo
#38. 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.
Michelangelo
#39. What do you despise? By this you are truly known.
Michelangelo
#40. Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.
Michelangelo
#41. Do you know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who are not?
Michelangelo
#42. Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
Michelangelo
#43. 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.
Michelangelo
#44. Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.
Michelangelo
#46. And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.
Michelangelo
#47. A good sculpture can be rolled downhill without breaking.
Michelangelo
#48. Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to ought that doth time depend
Michelangelo
#49. There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
Michelangelo
#50. 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.
Michelangelo
#51. If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.
Michelangelo
#52. Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.
Michelangelo
#53. 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.
Michelangelo
#54. So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.
Michelangelo
#55. It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.
Michelangelo
#56. Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle
Michelangelo
#57. Whenever a great painter ... does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true.
Michelangelo
#58. Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.
Michelangelo
#59. I couldn't give you something mediocre even if that's all you asked for.
Michelangelo
#60. My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.
Michelangelo
#62. The hand that follows intellect can achieve.
Michelangelo
#64. I criticise by creation, not by finding fault.
Michelangelo
#65. Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
Michelangelo
#66. How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at ... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.
Michelangelo
#67. I serve for the love of God and in Him have all my hope.
Michelangelo
#68. Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.
Michelangelo
#69. The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.
Michelangelo
#70. 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.
Michelangelo
#71. I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.
Michelangelo
#72. Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
Michelangelo
#73. Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
Michelangelo
#75. Forgiveness is divine, but never pay pull price for late pizza.
Michelangelo
#76. The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.
Michelangelo
#77. I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled until I set him free.
Michelangelo
#78. If people knew how hard I worked at my art, they would not consider me a genius.
Michelangelo
#79. If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
Michelangelo
#80. 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 ...
Michelangelo
#81. There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.
Michelangelo
#82. Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.
Michelangelo
#83. Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.
Michelangelo
#84. Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.
Michelangelo
#85. I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
Michelangelo
#86. Let it be enough for you to have bread and live virtuously and poorly like Christ, as I do here. I live meanly and don't bother about life or honor ... and I live with the greatest toil and a thousand worries. It is now about 15 years since I had a happy hour.
Michelangelo
#87. Lorenzo de' Medici seeks highly skilled, aesthetically oriented individual to conceive and implement several major public projects. You are a generalist with sound training in structural engineering, synthesis of pigments and Christian iconography. Some climbing involved
Michelangelo
#88. The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.
Michelangelo
#89. Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!
Michelangelo
#90. 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.
Michelangelo
#91. So now, from this mad passion Which made me take art for an idol and a king I have learnt the burden of error that it bore And what misfortune springs from man's desire ... The world's frivolities have robbed me of the time That I was given for reflecting upon God.
Michelangelo
#92. The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.
Michelangelo
#93. 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.
Michelangelo
#94. Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your masterpiece, Your Life.
Michelangelo
#96. Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.
Michelangelo
#97. He who does not master the nude cannot understand the principles of architecture.
Michelangelo
#98. Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.
Michelangelo
#99. No one has mastery, Before he is at the end, Of his art and his life.
Michelangelo
#100. I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.
Michelangelo
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