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.
In a healthy, normal society, people can disagree with one another, even have diametrically opposing views, and this does not at all mean that they must hate one another. The Polish authorities, however, have made the division of Poles their primary task.
A thief is a man in need. A liar is a man in fear.
What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?
And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God's wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness and lack of foreknowledge is the cause; for matters that have been in God's foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.
Perhaps weβve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon earth and decided thereβs no sign of intelligent life.
The rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression - we cannot take them for granted. They do not exist willy-nilly across the world; they are very rare.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.