Michelangelo Buonarroti

“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.”

“No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.”

“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.”

“The greatest artist does not have any conceptWhich a single piece of marble does not itself containWithin its excess, though onlyA hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”

“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.”

“Critique by creating.”

“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.”

“AS YOU GIVE OUT SO SHALL YOU RECEIVE.”

“As when, O lady mine,With chiselled touchThe stone unhewn and coldBecomes a living mould,The more the marble wastes,The more the statue grows.”

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

“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.”