Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.
Interpretation
Understand the intentions behind someone's words rather than just their literal meaning.
This quote emphasizes the importance of discerning the true intentions and emotions behind the words people say, suggesting that effective communication comes from understanding the heart and feelings of others rather than merely focusing on the surface-level meaning. Michelangelo implies that good intentions can often be misinterpreted if one only looks at the words used, urging us to look deeper for genuine understanding.
In practice
In a discussion on emotional intelligence, this quote can highlight the importance of empathy.
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.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
The truly patient man neither complains of his hard lot nor desires to be pitied by others. He speaks of his sufferings in a natural, true, and sincere way, without murmuring, complaining, or exaggerating them.
You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.
The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
Only when you lift a burden, God will lift your burden. Divine paradox this! The man who staggers and falls because his burden is too great can lighten that burden by taking on the weight of another's burden. You get by giving, but your part of giving must be given first.
If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.
Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke.
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