Michelangelo Quotes - Page 4

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

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.

Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

I dare affirm that any artist... who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent.

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.

Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

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.

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.

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.

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

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

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

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

If the wine is not good, then throw it out!

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

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

If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.

One paints with one's head, not one's hand.

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

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.

And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.