Michelangelo Quotes

Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.

The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows.

If people knew how hard I worked at my art, they would not consider me a genius.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

A great sculpture can roll down a hill without breaking.

If an actor tries to understand too much, he will act in an intellectual and unnatural manner.

I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.

I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene.

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.

If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.

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.

Art is a shadow of Divine perfection.

Genius is infinite painstaking.

With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.

No one has mastery, Before he is at the end, Of his art and his life.

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair; A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given; And death was safety and great joy to find; But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.

The script is simply a series of notes for the film.

People are always misquoting me.

You cannot penetrate events with reportage.

Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. That's why I make films, not iceboxes.

Monica Vitti is astonishingly mobile. Few actresses have such mobile features. She has her own personal and original way of acting.

Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle

Why do You Send Fools To judge My Work?

If the wine is not good, then throw it out!

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

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.

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.

There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.

From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.

After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety.

Violence is not the only means of persuasion.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

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.

Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.

I am no artist - please come and help me.

In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.

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.

Whenever a great painter... does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true.

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.

I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best.

One paints with one's head, not one's hand.

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.

The public buys "art" - but the word is drained of its meaning.

We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.

... demanding a separation between church and state isn't enough; the churches' basic doctrines must be changed, with homophobia written out forever.

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.