Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564), known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art.
Michelangelo Quotes
It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.
—Michelangelo
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.
—Michelangelo
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.
—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.
—Michelangelo
With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.
—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
As you give out so shall you receive.
—Michelangelo
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.
—Michelangelo
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo
Attend to living; and if you can’t have the honors of the country as the other citizens do, let it suffice you to have bread and live virtuously in Christ and poorly.
—Michelangelo
Where I lack words I shall supply with deeds.
—Michelangelo
Believe it or not, I can actually draw.
—Michelangelo
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
—Michelangelo
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
—Michelangelo
The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor’s hand can break the spell to free the figures.
—Michelangelo
Critique by creating.
—Michelangelo
Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.
—Michelangelo
Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone, while pain and guilt still linger here below, blindness and numbness–these please me alone; Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.
—Michelangelo
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.
—Michelangelo
If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.
—Michelangelo
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
—Michelangelo
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
—Michelangelo
Please don’t trouble yourself. God didn’t make us to abandon us.
—Michelangelo
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
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
—Michelangelo
I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.
—Michelangelo
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
—Michelangelo
Why do you send fools to judge my work?
—Michelangelo
I believe there are many poor and noble families in Florence with whom it would be a charity to become allied, even if there were no dowry, because there would also be no pride.
—Michelangelo
Do not suffer, for God has not made us to abandon us.
—Michelangelo