Michelangelo famous 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.
-- Michelangelo

#Inspirational #Life #Positive

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Happiness #Inspiring #Success

Genius is eternal patience.
-- Michelangelo

#Positive #Patience #Art

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

#Life #Art #Angel

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

#Art #Pain #Inspiration

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
-- Michelangelo

#Christian #Art #Perfection

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Birthday #Hope #Believe

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
-- Michelangelo

#Artist #Perception #Source

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

#Art #Block #Inspiration

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Wall #Attitude

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

#Art #Inspiration #Eye

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

#Inspirational #Inspiration #Mastery

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
-- Michelangelo

#Education #Teacher #Perfection

I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Children #Wife

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
-- Michelangelo

#Life #Success #Leadership

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

#Beautiful #Art #Pain

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.
-- Michelangelo

#Artist #Doe #Marble

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?
-- Michelangelo

#Beautiful #Inspiration #Shoes

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Art

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
-- Michelangelo

#Faith #Encouragement #Art

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

#Love #Inspiration #Men

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Looks #Sculpture

The hand that follows intellect can achieve.
-- Michelangelo

#Inspirational #Hands #Achieve

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Beautiful #Believe #Men

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Men #Order

If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
-- Michelangelo

#Artist #Hands #Memorial

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.
-- Michelangelo

#Life And Love #Heart #Eye

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

#Drawing #Treasure #May

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
-- Michelangelo

#Hands #Wells

Your greatness is measured by your horizons.
-- Michelangelo

#Greatness #Horizon

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Appreciation #Perfection #Appreciate

Critique by creating.
-- Michelangelo

#Inspiration #Creating #Critique

Genius is infinite painstaking.
-- Michelangelo

#Innovation #Genius #Infinite

Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Challenges #Constraints

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Entrepreneur #Might #Succeed

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Religious #Perfect #Soul

A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Sculpture #Hills

I serve for the love of God and in Him have all my hope.
-- Michelangelo

#God Love #Christianity

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

#Artist #Form #Marble

He who does not master the nude cannot understand the principles of architecture.
-- Michelangelo

#Beauty #Principles #Doe

If people knew how hard I worked at my art, they would not consider me a genius.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Team #People

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

#Ideas #Excess #Stones

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
-- Michelangelo

#Beauty #Art #Inspiration

Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.
-- Michelangelo

#Copying #Copies

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.
-- Michelangelo

#Artist #Wasted Time #Harm

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
-- Michelangelo

#Love #Artist #Cities

Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.
-- Michelangelo

#Travel #Glory #Lord

He who follows another will never overtake him
-- Michelangelo

#Inspirational

I live and love in God's peculiar light.
-- Michelangelo

#Love #Religious #Light

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

#Inspiration #Waste #Wasting Time

Patience is eternal genius
-- Michelangelo

#Inspiration #Genius

The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.
-- Michelangelo

#Character #Taste #Needs

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

#Inspiration #Bears #Doe

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Beauty #Men #Shoes

The greatest risk to man is not that he aims to high and misses, but that he aims to low and hits.
-- Michelangelo

#Men #Missing #Risk

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

#Heart #Sublime #Desire

There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
-- Michelangelo

#Angel #Attention

The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.
-- Michelangelo

#Waste #Grows #Marble

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Block #Inspiration #Sculpture

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Inspiration #Stones #Waste

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
-- Michelangelo

#Wise #Heart #Men

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

#Wine #Dissatisfaction

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

#Way

An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.
-- Michelangelo

#Eye #Artist #Hands

I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.
-- Michelangelo

#Art #Men #Thinking

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

#Religious #Art #Mind

What one has most to work and struggle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount of labour and sweat in such a way that it may afterward appear, however much it was laboured upon, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not.
-- Michelangelo

#Struggle #Sweat #Deception

My beard towards heaven, I feel my nape support / The back of my head, I grow the breast of a harpy / And my brush as it drips continually / Upon my face, makes it a gorgeous floor.
-- Michelangelo

#Support #Heaven #Beard

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.
-- Michelangelo

#Perfect #Soul #Mind

Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.
-- Michelangelo

#Stress #Mind #Sculpture

Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.
-- Michelangelo

#Pride #Order #Imagination

Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.
-- Michelangelo

#Sculpture #Painting #Made