Michelangelo Buonarroti Quotes

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.

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.

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 soyou offer calm in your moist shade; you sendto this low sphere the dreams where we ascendup to the highest, where I long to go.Shadow of death that brings to quiet closeall 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE.

Critique by creating.

The greatest artist does not have any conceptWhich a single piece of marble does not itself containWithin its excess, though onlyA hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.

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

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.

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.

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.

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

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.

As when, O lady mine,With chiselled touchThe stone unhewn and coldBecomes a living mould,The more the marble wastes,The more the statue grows.