Michelangelo Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

Love is a beautiful image
Imagined or seen within the heart,
The friend of virtue and gentility.

Michelangelo
Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.

Michelangelo
However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.

Michelangelo
The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

Michelangelo
What one has most to work and struggle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount of labour and sweat in such a way that it may afterward appear, however much it was laboured upon, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not.

Michelangelo
The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

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

Michelangelo
Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.

Michelangelo
Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.

Michelangelo
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.

Michelangelo
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

Michelangelo
I have only too much of a wife in this art of mine, who has always kept me in tribulation, and my children shall be the works I leave, which, even if they are naught, will live for a while.

Michelangelo
And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.

Michelangelo
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.

Michelangelo
It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.

Michelangelo
I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.

Michelangelo
Your lordship, only worldly light in this age of ours, you can never be pleased with another man's work for there is no man who resembles you, nor one to equal you … It grieves me greatly that I cannot recapture my past, so as to longer be at your service. As it is, I can only offer you my future, which is short, for I am too old … That is all I have to say. Read my heart for "the quill cannot express good will."

Michelangelo