Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Beauty
I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.
—Michelangelo
Topics: City Life, Cities
I am still learning.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Creativity
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Work
Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to aught that doth on time depend.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Soul
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
Topics: Attitude
Genius is eternal patience.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Resilience, Creativity, Patience, Genius
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
Topics: Goals, Risk, Achievement
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Angels, Art, Imagination
Trifles make perfection, but perfection itself is no trifle.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Trifles, Facts
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss, but that our aim is too low and we reach it.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Aspirations, Ideal, Great, Goals
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Perfectionism
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?
—Michelangelo
Topics: Spirituality, Spirit
Criticize by creating.
—Michelangelo
This comes from dangling from the ceiling
—Michelangelo
Topics: The Artist
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Perfection, Art
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art
Everything hurts.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Pain
Patience is eternal genius.
—Michelangelo
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes
The more the statue grows.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Death
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
Topics: Confidence, Assurance, Self-Discovery, Promises
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Master, Excellence, Work, Mastery, New, People
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
—Michelangelo
The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Character
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.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Death
My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness
—Michelangelo
Topics: Soul
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Art
Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
—Michelangelo
Topics: Confidence, Belief, Faith, Conviction
Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all come…
—Michelangelo
Topics: Beauty, Perception
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Leonardo da Vinci Italian Polymath
- James Abbott McNeill Whistler American Painter, Etcher
- William Hogarth English Painter, Engraver
- Georges Braque French Painter
- Pablo Picasso Spanish Painter
- Dante Alighieri Italian Poet, Philosopher
- Thomas Aquinas Italian Catholic Priest
- Galileo Galilei Italian Astronomer
- Federico Fellini Italian Filmmaker
- Luciano Pavarotti Italian Tenor
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