Michelangelo Buonarroti quotes

The greater 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 hit it.

• 54
• risk

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

• 27
• art

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

• 19
• desires

Genius is eternal patience.

• 17
• genius

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

• 10
• soul

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

• 9
• excellence

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

• 8
• beauty

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

• 4
• city

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

• 3
• art

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.

• 2
• facts

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

• 2
• art

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

• 2
• artist

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.

• 1
• promises

The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes The more the statue grows.

• 1
• art

This comes from dangling from the ceiling

• 1
• artist

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 that the garment with which it is clothed?

• spirituality

The greatest artist does not have any concept Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain Within its excess, though only A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.

• art

Lord, make me see thy glory in every place.

• religious

Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.

• death

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

• work