What good I have comes from the pure air of your native Arezzo, and also because I sucked in chisels and hammers with my nurse’s milk.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

Even if you are divine, you don’t disdain male consorts

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.

I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.

It is well with me when only when I have a chisel in my hand

After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.

From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?

If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which...

My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through earth’s loveliness

Genius is eternal patience.

I live and love in God’s peculiar light.

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would...

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

Everything hurts.

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.

Many believe – and I believe – that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of...

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison...

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image.

The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.

I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it

I am still learning.

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.

Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to ought that...

Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.