180 Quotes by 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.

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

I am no artist – please come and help me.

He who follows another will never overtake him.

Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it’s extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.

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.

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.

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.