Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.
Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.
With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.
Love is a beautiful image Imagined or seen within the heart, The friend of virtue and gentility.
The goods of Fortune, even such as they really are, still need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying no the possessing, that makes us happy.
Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone, While pain and guilt still linger here below, Blindness and numbness – these please me alone; Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.
The great tragedy of life is not that people set their sights too high and fail to achieve their goals but that they set their sights too low and do.
The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.
Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it’s extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?
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.