Words matter. These are the best Michelangelo Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
I am still learning.
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
Genius is eternal patience.
What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?
Trifles make perfection, and 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.
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.
I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
What do you despise? By this you are truly known.
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
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.
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.
Even if you are divine, you don’t disdain male consorts.
I live and love in God’s peculiar light.
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
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.
There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.
It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.
A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
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.
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.
