Top 36 Sistine Quotes & Sayings

Even Michelangelo got paid for doing the Sistine Chapel. To those artists who say they're doing it for the love of art, I say: Get real.

Back to the painting of the Sistine Chapel, there's always been run-ins between benefactors and artists.

If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.

If Michaelangelo were a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.

Fashion is everywhere. Everywhere! Flowers are fashion to me, the sky is fashion, my garden is fashion. My darling, the Sistine Chapel is fashion.

A visionary company is like a great work of art. Think of Michelangelo's scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or his statue of David. Think of a great and enduring novel like Huckleberry Finn or Crime and Punishment. Think of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Shakespeare's Henry V. Think of a beautifully designed building, like the masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. You can't point to any one single item that makes the whole thing work; it's the entire work-all the pieces working together to create an overall effect-that leads to enduring greatness.

Could five hundred men have painted the Sistine Chapel?

Mining in BC's Sacred Headwaters is like drilling for oil in the Sistine Chapel

Christians should ultimately do everything that we do with excellence. There's a story about repairs in the Sistine Chapel ... when some repair work was being done the craftsmen saw that the work on the other side of the plaster, the part not visible to the human eye was done with the same kind of craftsmanship that was done on what was visible and observable. And the explanation for that is that the work that Christians do is not just for human consumption, but it is also for the eyes of God.

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel.

The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.

I don't really believe in political art. I feel in my heart the purpose of art transcends cultural and class and politics. I think something like the Sistine Chapel is something that goes beyond just being a Christian thing. It transcends its Christianity and becomes sort of a universal beauty. And I think that's true of music and art and literature.

When you go to the Sistine Chapel with Sophia Loren, it can be quite some time before your thoughts turn to the ceiling.

On Sofia Coppola's 16th birthday, way back in 1987, I stole a lip gloss from her Sistine Chapel of a bedroom. Years later, I left a Chanel lip gloss in the reception of the Mercer Hotel for her. You know why? I believe that you've got to fix your karma.

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.

When you're a kid and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

People who prefer e-books...think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel.

Communication has always been at the service of power. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel for the Pope. Is it not an advertisement for the Church? I try to make the best pictures I can and sometimes they are used in advertising campaigns.

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

When you're a kid, and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.

When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve.

I love this site. It was lovingly hand-shaped it. Your soul transformed this into this art. It was perfect. I have tried to create another equal to it... but to no avail, so I will just have to paint the Sistine Chapel.

Don't listen to those who say, you taking too big a chance. Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today.

When I started out, I wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel. But I didn't have the content.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor

Jack Nicholson is fairly gifted. We were at the Sistine Chapel, and everybody went from looking straight up to looking across the room at him.

The Tiger Rising is, again, about a motherless child. His name is Rob Horton. He is dealing with the death of his mother, when he and his father move to a new town. And two things happen the same day that Rob gets sent home. One is he meets a girl named Sistine Bailey, who is what my mother would call "a piece of work," and he finds a real tiger in a cage in the woods behind the motel where he lives with his dad. And that's the story: what happens with the Sistine tiger, the real tiger and Rob's grief.

Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn’t easy. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage.

You may never see a Rembrandt or the Sistine Chapel, but aren't you glad as a human being they are still there? Probably the only thing that separates us from other creatures is that we aren't limited by our basic needs, like food and water; we have this sense of the whole.

Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.

Mind you, Mount Rushmore isn't exactly the Parthenon or the Sistine Chapel either. After the naïve daftness of the Crazy Horse monument, I find the pompous idiocy of those four presidents somehow more risible still. Wishing to show respect or feel a vicarious thrill of admiration and pride, I can only giggle. For which I am very sorry. Any loyal American reading this who feels outraged and insulted is free to explode with derisive snorts of laughter at any British equivalent.

One can easily tell that the creator of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel was above all a sculptor.

If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita Bryant to go on television and push orange juice?