Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop. |
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. |
I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint. |
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has. |
What do you despise? By this you are truly known. |
Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture. |
I am still learning. |
I live and love in God's peculiar light. |
A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it. |
My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness. |
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. |
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 torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes. |
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. |
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. |
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. |
There is no greater harm than that of time wasted. |
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. |
I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish. |
Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven. |
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. |