C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Michael Angelo

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;

A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;

And death was safety and great joy to find;

But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.

The stone unhewn and cold

Becomes a living mould,

The more the marble wastes

The more the statue grows.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Death and love are the two wings which bear man from earth to heaven.

I carry my satchel still.

I criticise by creation, not by finding fault.

If life be a pleasure, yet, since death also is sent by the hand of the same Master, neither should that displease us.

The hand that follows intellect can achieve.

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

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

Trifles make perfection; but perfection is no trifle.