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Michelangelo Quotes

Browse 20 quotes about Michelangelo.

Michelangelo Quotes

“Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists.”

ArtArtistCultureRenaissanceArtistryAbsolute TruthRaphaelDanteMichelangeloArt Theory
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets.”

MenLoveRomanceWomenModelsOld AgeMothersPoetsHomosexualityArtistsStatuesProphetsSonnetsMichelangeloHomoeroticism
Book:The Intermediate Sex: A Study Of Some Transitional Types Of Men And Women
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“The table before the emperor was spread with an entire city of sugar, a city so resplendent it was as though a door had opened into heaven itself. Groves of trees dotted the the table's landscape with beautiful painted castles nestled among hills of pale green. Stars hung from the trees and graced the castle flags. From the ceiling, many dozens of gold and silver stars hung by ribbons over the table, creating a fantastical sky. Amid this wondrous landscape there were sculptures of ancient Roman gods in various scenes: Jupiter on a mountain, lightning bolt in hand; Venus born from a sea of blue; Bacchus in drunken debauchery in a grove of delicate green vines. Ever one to be in control, Michelangelo had insisted he not only develop the many dozen molds but that he also be the one to pour the sugar and finalize the details with sugar paste.”

SugarLandscapesMichelangeloBartolomeo ScappiRoman MythologyMolds
Book:The Chef's Secret
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“Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”

MasturbationIliadQueen ElizabethHomerRobinson CrusoeCaesarMichelangeloOnanismThe IliadSodomyZuluBenjamin FranklinCetewayo
Book:On Masturbation
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“People are creators. But I doubt that many realize this. We are not meant to go out into the world and find flawless things, we are not meant to sit down and have flawless things fall into our laps. But we are creators. We can create a beautiful thing out of what we have. The problem with idealistic people is that they see themselves as receivers instead of creators, they end up hunting for the flaw in everything in order to measure it up to their ideals. Now, when you see yourself as a creator, you can look at a chunk of marble and see the angel within it. Then you carve until you have set that angel free.”

Inspirational QuotesInspirational LifeMakersIdealismHumanity And SocietyInspirational LivingCreatorsMichelangeloMarble StatuesIdealistic PeopleCreating Beautiful ThingsCreating The BeautifulMarble AngelsMarble Carvings
Author:C. JoyBell C.
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“Michelangelo alone would tolerate no half-and-half. Clarity he wanted and he would have. The question of form was for him a religious matter; for him and only for him it was all or nothing. And this is the explanation of the lonely fearful wrestlings of this man, surely the unhappiest figure in our art; of the fragmentary, the tortured, the unsatisfied, the terrible in his forms that frightened his contemporaries. No man ever made a more honest effort than he did to find a way with the chisel into a buried world.”

ArtStruggleMichelangeloOswald Spengler
Book:The Decline of the West, Vol 1: Form and Actuality
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“Within the time span of a single generation surrounding the year 1500, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their many masterworks of the High Renaissance, revealing the birth of the new human as much in da Vinci's multiform genius and the godlike incarnations of the David and the Sistine Creation of Adam as in the new perspectival objectivity and poietic empowerment of the Renaissance artist; Columbus sailed west and reached America, Vasco da Gama sailed east and reached India, and the Magellan expedition circumnavigated the globe, opening the world forever to itself; Luther posted his theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle church and began the enormous convulsion of Europe and the Western psyche called the Reformation; and Copernicus conceived the heliocentric theory and began the even more momentous Scientific Revolution. From this instant, the human self, the known world, the cosmos, heaven and earth were all radically and irrevocably transformed. All this happened within a period of time briefer than that which has passed since Woodstock and the Moon landing. (p. 4)”

ArtLeonardoRaphaelMichelangeloTransformation Of ConsciousnessRichard TarnasCosmos And PsycheThe Renaissance
Book:Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
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“Don’t say you don’t have enough time or enough money to change the world. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Gandhi, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ.”

ChoicesChristAttentionChristianityTeachFocusDreamsInspireDanceGoalsActivismDream BigGiftsExcusesTalentsGandhiServeJourneysInventLeonardo Da VinciMother TeresaBeethovenDestinationsMichelangeloPushing YourselfHelen KellerProcastinationStop SettlingCopeoutsCreate MusicWrite Books
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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