“I am still learning.”
— Michelangelo
“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.”
“Genius is eternal patience. ”
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius. ”
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.”
“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.”
“Only God creates. The rest of us just copy.”
“I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.”
“Your greatness is measured by your horizons.”
“To touch is to give life.”
“The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.”
“Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”
“I couldn’t give you something mediocre even if that’s all you asked for.”
“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”
“Gazing on beautiful things acts on my soul.”
“Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.”
“There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.”
“If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.”
“No one has mastery, Before he is at the end, Of his art and his life.”
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
“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.”
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
“Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!”
“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.”
“No great work of art is ever finished.”
“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.”
“Do not fret, for God did not create us to abandon us.”
“Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.”
“As you give out, so shall you receive.”
“To know each other is the best way to understand each other. To understand each other is the only way to love each other.”
“Critique by creating.”
“The mind, the soul, becomes ennobled by the endeavour to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after perfection is striving for something devine.”
“Souls will never ascend to Heaven until the sight of beauty lifts them there.”
“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.”
“Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.”
“Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your masterpiece, Your Life.”
“An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye.”
“Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.”
“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”
“Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.”
“He who follows another will never overtake him.”
“I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ.”
“A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.”
“The hand that follows intellect can achieve.”
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