Top 15 Michelangelo Quotes

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

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.

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

Genius is eternal patience.

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

Ancora Imparo

(Yet I am learning)

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.

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

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

Critique by creating.

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.

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.

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.

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