The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone.

Do not be concerned that you might set a target too high and fail. Be concerned that you will set it too low and succeed.

Let it be enough for you to have bread and live virtuously and poorly like Christ, as I do here. I live meanly and don't bother about life or honor ... and I live with the greatest toil and a thousand worries. It is now about 15 years since I had a happy hour.

Even if you are divine, you don't disdain male consorts.

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.

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.