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My Beard Towards Heaven, I Feel My Nape Support / The Back Of My Head, I Grow The Breast Of A Harpy / And My Brush As It Drips Continually / Upon My Face, Makes It A Gorgeous Floor.

-Michelangelo

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My Beard Towards Heaven,

Michelangelo

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My Beard Towards Heaven, I Feel My Nape Support / The Back Of My Head, I Grow The Breast Of A Harpy / And My Brush As It Drips Continually / Upon My Face, Makes It A Gorgeous Floor.

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Serene I Fold My Hands And Wait.

A Great Sculpture Can Roll Down A Hill Without Breaking.

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.

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And Still I Am Learning.

Poets And Painters Have The Power To Dare, I Mean To Dare To Do Whatever They May Approve Of.

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The Hand That Follows Intellect Can Achieve.

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If People Knew How Hard I Worked At My Art, They Would Not Consider Me A Genius.

I Already Have A Wife Who Is Too Much For Me.. She Is My Art, And My Works Are My Children.

Every Beauty Which Is Seen Here By Persons Of Perception Resembles More Than Anything Else That Celestial Source From Which We All Are Come.

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If The Wine Is Not Good, Then Throw It Out!

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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.

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The Idea Is There Locked Inside. All You Have To Do Is Remove The Excess Stone.

Do Not Fret, For God Did Not Create Us To Abandon Us.

True Art Is Made Noble And Religious By The Mind Producing It.

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.

Gazing On Beautiful Things Acts On My Soul.

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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.

I Am Always Learning.

Always Learning

I Couldn't Give You Something Mediocre Even If That's All You Asked For.

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.

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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.

There Is No Tongue To Speak His Eulogy; Too Brightly Burned His Splendour For Our Eyes: Far Easier To Condemn His Injurers, Than For The Tongue To Reach His Smallest Worth. He To The Realms Of Sinfulness Came Down, To Teach Mankind; Ascending Then To God, Heaven Unbarred To Him Her Lofty Gates, To Whom His Country Hers Refused To Ope. Ungrateful Land, To Its Own Injury Nurse Of His Fate! Well Too Does This Instruct, That Greatest Ills Fall To The Perfectest. And 'midst A Thousand Proofs, Let This Suffice, That, As His Exile Had No Parallel, So Never Was There Man More Great Than He.

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If People Knew How Hard I Worked To Get My Mastery, It Wouldn't Seem So Wonderful At All.

Do Not Be Concerned That You Might Set A Target Too High And Fail. Be Concerned That You Will Set It Too Low And Succeed.

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.

Painting And Sculpture, Labour And Good Faith, Have Been My Ruin And I Continually Go From Bad To Worse. Better It Would Have Been For Me If I Had Set Myself To Making Matches In My Youth. I Should Not Be In Such Distress Of Mind.

After Four Tortured Years, More Than 400 Over Life-sized Figures, I Felt As Old And As Weary As Jeremiah. I Was Only 37, Yet Friends Did Not Recognize The Old Man I Had Become.

Trifles Make Perfection But Perfection Is Not A Trifle

I Saw The Angel In The Marble And Carved Until I Set Him Free.

A Good Sculpture Can Be Rolled Downhill Without Breaking.

The Power Of One Fair Face Makes My Love Sublime, For It Has Weaned My Heart From Low Desires.

I Am Still Learning. (at Age 87)

To Know Each Other Is The Best Way To Understand Each Other. To Understand Each Other Is The Only Way To Love Each Other.

Love Each Other

Lord, Grant That I May Always Desire More Than I Can Accomplish.

Do You Know That Women Who Are Chaste Remain Much Fresher Than Those Who Are Not?

Good Painting Is The Kind That Looks Like Sculpture.

So Take Care Of Your Life And Take Notice And Be Observant, For The Number Of Widows Is Always Far Greater Than The Number Of Widowers.

Art Is A Shadow Of Divine Perfection.

The More The Marble Wastes, The More The Statue Grows.

For Those Who Feel It, Nothing Makes The Soul So Religious And Pure As The Endeavor To Create Something Perfect; For God Is Perfection, And Whoever Strives After It, Is Striving After Something Divine. True Painting Is Only The Image Of The Perfection Of God, A Shadow Of The Pencil With Which He Paints, A Melody, A Striving After Harmony.

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.

Beauty Is The Purgation Of Superfluities.

I Was Never The Kind Of Painter Or Sculptor Who Kept A Shop.

My Beard Towards Heaven, I Feel My Nape Support / The Back Of My Head, I Grow The Breast Of A Harpy / And My Brush As It Drips Continually / Upon My Face, Makes It A Gorgeous Floor.

I Dare Affirm That Any Artist... Who Has Nothing Singular, Eccentric, Or At Least Reputed To Be So, In His Person, Will Never Become A Superior Talent.

A Beautiful Thing Never Gives So Much Pain As Does Failing To Hear And See It.

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.

The Great Tragedy Of Life Is Not That People Set Their Sights Too High And Fail To Achieve Their Goals But That They Set Their Sights Too Low And Do.

An Artist Does His Most Difficult Work When He Steps Back From The Blank Canvas And Thinks About What He Is Going To Create.

No Great Work Of Art Is Ever Finished.

No One Has Mastery, Before He Is At The End, Of His Art And His Life.

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.

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