Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

I already have a wife who is too much for me.. she is my art, and my works are my children.

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.

No great work of art is ever finished.

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 the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.