Michelangelo Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Michelangelo's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Sculptor Michelangelo's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 148 quotes on this page collected since March 6, 1475! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.

  • If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.

  • The mind, the soul, becomes ennobled by the endeavour to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after perfection is striving for something devine.

  • Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.

  • Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.

    Art  
  • If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures.

  • True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.

    Art  
  • Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

  • The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

  • Your greatness is measured by your horizons.

  • Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

    Art  
    Georgia Illetschko, Michelangelo Buonarroti (2004). “I, Michelangelo”, Prestel Pub
  • The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.

  • Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

    "Character Sketches : Or, The Blackboard Mirror" by George Augustus Lofton, (p. 432), 1890.
  • I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

  • How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

  • 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.

    Art  
  • 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.

  • In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

    Quoted in Robert J Clements (ed) Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait (1968).
  • So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.

  • However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.

    John Addington Symonds, Michelangelo Buonarroti (2002). “The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti: Based on Studies in the Archives of the Buonarroti Family at Florence”, p.82, University of Pennsylvania Press
  • Serene I fold my hands and wait.

  • Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.

  • 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.

  • Beauty depends on purpose. It is in the elements best suited to their purpose or aim that beauty shines forth most strongly.

    Georgia Illetschko, Michelangelo Buonarroti (2004). “I, Michelangelo”, Prestel Pub
  • Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!

  • 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, Pavel Preiss (1982). “Michelangelo: drawings”
  • When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said, "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David.

  • Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty.

  • 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

  • Critique by creating.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 148 quotes from the Sculptor Michelangelo, starting from March 6, 1475! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!