I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.
The delicate droop of the petals standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.
I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.
My drawings are the result of my sculpture.
Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.
Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature.
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about. He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.
The nude alone is well dressed.
Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the marble. Things that remake the soul of him who understands them.
If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy...
The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.
In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me.
It is the artist who is truthful, while the photographer is mendacious; for, in reality, time never stops cold.
When he sees beings everywhere destroying each other; when he sees all youth fading, all strength failing, all genius dying, when he is face to face with the will which decreed these tragic laws, more than ever he rejoices in his knowledge, and, seized anew by the passion for truth, he is happy.
There is grace in elegance, but beyond grace there is perfection.
For him life is an endless joy, a perpetual delight, a mad intoxication. Not all seems good to him, for suffering, which must often come to those he loves and to himself, cruelly contradicts his optimism. But all is beautiful to him because he walks forever in the light of spiritual truth.
At times his own heart is on the rack, yet stronger than his pain is the bitter joy which he experiences in understanding and giving expression to that pain.
He salutes ingratitude as an experience which shall enrich his soul. His ecstasy is terrifying at times, but it is still happiness, because it is the continual adoration of truth.