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