A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art – perfection.
I am no artist – please come and help me.
Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.
I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.
If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures.
Forgiveness is divine, but never pay pull price for late pizza.
If I love in thee, beloved, only what thou lovest most, do not be angry; for so one spirit is enamoured of another.
The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
Even if you are divine, you don’t disdain male consorts.
I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.
Beauty depends on purpose. It is in the elements best suited to their purpose or aim that beauty shines forth most strongly.
Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.
The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.
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.
Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!
Can’t you see the angel imprisoned in the block of stone trying to get out? I am trying to free him.
Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.
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.
If the wine is not good, then throw it out!