Michelangelo Buonarroti > Quotes

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

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius. ”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“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.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Genius is eternal patience. ”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

“Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“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.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“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.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Ancora imparo.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Patience is eternal genius”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

“O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue,
with peace you force all the restless work to end;
those who exalt you see and understand,
and he is sound of mind who honours you.
You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so
you offer calm in your moist shade; you send
to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend
up to the highest, where I long to go.
Shadow of death that brings to quiet close
all miseries that plague the heart and soul,
for those in pain the last and best of cures;
you heal the flesh of its infirmities,
dry and our tears and shut away our toil,
and free the good from wrath and fretting cares.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, Complete Poems and Selected Letters

“Critique by creating.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“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 Buonarroti

“I am still learning.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.

When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Believe it or not, I can actually draw.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti