Michelangelo

By Michelangelo 

“Genius is eternal patience. ” 

“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.” 

“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.” 

“The greatest artist does not have any concept

Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain

Within its excess, though only

A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.” 

“Critique by creating.” 

“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.” 

“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.” 

“Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.” 

“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.” 

“Self-negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse.” 

“The best of artists hath no art 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 live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.”