Michelangelo Quotes
More Michelangelo Quotes
Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.
camille paglia— p. 158 (Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990))
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
— 1915 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, blood shed they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
Harry Lime— Harry Lime's speech to Holly Martins as he leaves the great wheel, The Third Man. This phrase was added to the script by Welles who played Harry Lime. 1949
Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man.
Quentin Crisp— Ch. 19 (The Naked Civil Servant (1968))
There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most - men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cezanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort.
henry moore— In: Henry Moore, ?Alan G. Wilkinson (2002) Henry Moore-- Writings and Conversations. p. 117
The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses .
jacob bronowski— The Reader's Digest (1964) Vol. 84; also quoted in Structure and Plan (1974) by Glen A. Love, p. 154
In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern
Eric Hoffer— Entry (1954)
Ah, what balance is needed at the edges of such an abyss. I am left alone on the surface of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo ’s Adam, put my hand out into unknown space, hoping for the reciprocating touch?
r. s. thomas— "Threshold", p. 110
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
— Orson Welles as the character Harry Lime in the film The Third Man (1949)
It is impossible to decide whether a particular detail of the Pythagorean universe was the work of the master, or filled in by a pupil a remark which equally applies to Leonardo or Michelangelo . But there can be no doubt that the basic features were conceived by a single mind; that Pythagoras of Samos was both the founder of a new religious philosophy, and the founder of Science, as the word is understood today.
Arthur Koestler— Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959, 1963)
Few have probably ever heard of Fra Luca Pacioli, the inventor of double-entry bookkeeping; but he has probably had much more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo.
— 1957 Uses of the Past, ch.8.
[Michelangelo] Buonarotti commended it [Titian's painting] highly, saying that his colouring and his style pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning.
Giorgio Vasari— 1568 Lives of theArtists (translated by George Bull,1965).
I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks.
paul rudnick— p. 51 (I Shudder (2009))
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
— Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man, 1949.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
— Orson Welles, as the character Harry Lime in the Graham Greene film, The Third Man (1949).
