Quotes by Michelangelo

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”

“I live and love in Gods peculiar light.”

“The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in ones self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.”

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”

“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”

“Already at 16, 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.”

“Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.”

“It is necessary to keep ones compass in ones eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.”

“Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.”

“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.”

“From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.”

“The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptors hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone”

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldnt seem wonderful at all.”

“Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.”

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”