Michelangelo Buonarroti Quotes & Sayings

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Self-negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

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? — Michelangelo Buonarroti

As when, O lady mine,
With chiselled touch
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes,
The more the statue grows. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

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

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work? — Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

Patience is eternal genius — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Bound to you as the rays are to the sun. — 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

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

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

The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection — Michelangelo Buonarroti

AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

I am still learning. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

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? — 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

Believe it or not, I can actually draw. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Precious is sleep, better to be of stone,
while the oppression and the shame still last;
not seeing and not hearing, I am blest;
so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Genius is eternal patience. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don't waste time. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Yet I am learning — Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

The noble heart finds most in starlike eyes. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Critique by creating. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Please don't trouble yourself. God didn't make us to abandon us. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

You no longer feel the fear of a change of being and desire ... The course of the hours lays not violent hands upon you ; necessity and chance guide not your steps ... I can hardly write without envy.
Michelangelo on the dead. — 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