No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
If I am more alive because love burns and chars me,as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation,it’s that he who lays me low is my salvation,and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.
Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone,While pain and guilt still linger here below,Blindness and numbness–these please me alone;Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.
As when, O lady mine,With chiselled touchThe stone unhewn and coldBecomes a living mould,The more the marble wastes,The more the statue grows.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
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 does not have any conceptWhich a single piece of marble does not itself containWithin its excess, though onlyA hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.
The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
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 than the garment with which it is clothed?
Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.
Precious is sleep, better to be of stone,while the oppression and the shame still last;not seeing and not hearing, I am blest;so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down.
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.