Michelangelo Quotes

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.

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

Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your masterpiece, Your Life.

I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.

Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.

Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.

To know each other is the best way to understand each other. To understand each other is the only way to love each other.

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.

Do not be concerned that you might set a target too high and fail. Be concerned that you will set it too low and succeed.

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

No great work of art is ever finished.

Your greatness is measured by your horizons.

Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.

Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.

Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.

I am still learning. (at age 87)

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Genius is eternal patience.

Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.

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