Michelangelo

And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.

The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

The more the marble wastes,_x000D_ The more the statue grows.

Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

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

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.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

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

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

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.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

You must know that I am, of all men who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I behold someone who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him; and then I give myself up to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but wholly his.

Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.

I serve for the love of God and in Him have all my hope.

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

Genius is infinite painstaking.

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

I am still learning. (at age 87)

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.