Michelangelo Quotes

So now, from this mad passion
Which made me take art for an idol and a king
I have learnt the burden of error that it bore
And what misfortune springs from man's desire...
The world's frivolities have robbed me of the time
That I was given for reflecting upon God.

Precious is sleep, better to be of stone,
while the oppression and the shame still last;
not seeing and not hearing, I am blest;
so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down.

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.

Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire,
I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished
outside me, it besets and consumes me inside,
and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

Please don't trouble yourself. God didn't make us to abandon us.

Believe it or not, I can actually draw.

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

Bound to you as the rays are to the sun.

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

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

But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.

When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals.

You no longer feel the fear of a change of being and desire . . . The course of the hours lays not violent hands upon you ; necessity and chance guide not your steps ... I can hardly write without envy. — Michelangelo on the dead.

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.

In van! Cand vrei sa cazi, nu iei aminte la bratul care vrea sa te ridice.

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