That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false. ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
Interpretation
Galileo argues that painting is more admirable than sculpture because it creates the illusion of depth despite lacking physical relief.
In this quote, Galileo expresses his belief that painting, although it does not have the tangible depth of sculpture, can evoke a sense of three-dimensionality that is equally impressive. He challenges the notion that relief, which is a characteristic of sculpture, defines its superiority, suggesting that the skill involved in creating that illusion in painting should be celebrated even more.
In practice
In a discussion on the merits of different art forms, this quote can illuminate the hidden complexities of painting.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
There is no such thing as a German, French, or Anglo-American Expressionism! There are only young people trying to find their bearings in the world.
When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.
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