If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that both life and death are gifts from the same source, and we should accept death as a natural part of existence.
Michelangelo's quote reflects on the intertwined nature of life and death, advocating for a sense of acceptance towards both. It implies that if one has found joy and satisfaction in life, one should not resist or fear death, as it is an inevitable part of the human experience and emerges from the same divine authority that grants us life. This perspective encourages a harmonious view of existence, where both life and death are celebrated as expressions of a greater force.
In practice
In a eulogy, one might reference this quote to provide comfort to mourners.
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.
It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately.
Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.
Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character," said the count; "on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.
Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
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