Michelangelo Quotes about Inspiration

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

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

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

As you give out, so shall you receive.

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?

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?

Patience is eternal genius

Critique by creating.

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.

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

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.