Top 151 Quotes & Sayings by Michelangelo

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Italian artist Michelangelo.

Last updated on September 16, 2024.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work had a major influence on the development of Western art, particularly in relation to the Renaissance notions of humanism and naturalism. He is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century and several scholars have described Michelangelo as the most accomplished artist of his era.

Italian - Artist | March 6, 1475 - February 18, 1564

Source: Wikipedia

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

Michelangelo

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

Michelangelo

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

Michelangelo

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Michelangelo

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

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Michelangelo

The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.

Michelangelo

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

Michelangelo

Genius is eternal patience.

Michelangelo

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

Michelangelo

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

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

Michelangelo

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

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

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

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

Michelangelo

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

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

I am still learning.

Michelangelo

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.

Michelangelo

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

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Michelangelo

Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.

Michelangelo

Do you know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who are not?

Michelangelo

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.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

Your greatness is measured by your horizons.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art - perfection

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

No great work of art is ever finished.

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

Michelangelo

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

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

Michelangelo

Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.

Michelangelo

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

Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.

Michelangelo

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

I couldn't give you something mediocre even if that's all you asked for.