Zitate von Michelangelo

„Je vollkommener, desto mehr Schmerzen.“

—  Michelangelo

Sonette, über Dante

„Ich habe einen Engel aus Marmor gesehen und habe gemeißelt, bis ich ihn befreit habe.“

—  Michelangelo

„If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

Found attributed to Michelangelo in non-specialist publications as early as 1929 https://books.google.com/books?id=-0YhAQAAMAAJ&dq=If+people+knew+how+hard+I+had+to+work+to+gain+my+mastery%2C+it+would+not+seem+so+wonderful+at+all.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=michelangelo, but no source is known. Not found in any known biography of Michelangelo.
Disputed

„Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„Critique by creating.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„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.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

Attributed without citation in Ken Robinson, The Element (2009), p. 260. Widely attributed to Michelangelo since the late 1990s, this adage has not been found before 1980 when it appeared without attribution in E. C. McKenzie, Mac's giant book of quips & quotes.
Disputed
Variante: The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

„Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti, I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

Quelle: I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

„If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

On the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, as quoted in Speeches & Presentations Unzipped (2007) by Lori Rozakis, p. 71.
Earliest known citation is a Usenet post from August 2001 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.guitar.beginner/1Vdr9hO_g_g/grDd5GE99SEJ. No source is given. Possibly a variant of the preceding longer-established quote.
Disputed

„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.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„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.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„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.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

„I am still learning.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

Variant translation: Still I learn!
As translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Poetry and Imagination" (1847)
Inscribed next to an image of Father Time in a child's carriage, as quoted in Curiosities of Literature (1823) by Isaac Disraeli. Disraeli's attribution is, however, spurious. The attribution is retraceable to Richard Duppa's The lives and works of Michael Angelo and Raphael (London, 1806), where the author mistakenly attributes a drawing by Domenico Giuntalodi to Michelangelo Buonarroti. The original motto, properly spelled in Duppa as "ANCHORA IMPARO," was popular throughout the 1500's (thus in the course of Michelangelo's life), signalling the return of old age to childhood (bis pueri senex). The motto appeared in one of Giuntalodi's drawings (an image known to us through engravings and etchings by contemporaries), together with the indication that learning is a lifetime endeavor (a Latin phrase from Senaca's 76th Letter to Lucilius is cited to this effect). However, Giuntalodi's drawing--where time's elapse (an hourglass) stands before man's quest for learning--conveighs the "anchora imparo" message in a finely satyrical manner, suggesting the futility of human endeavors (for a kindred antecedent, see 1 Corinthians 13:11), with a specific allusion to humanist learning. See Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, " Domenico Giuntalodi, peintre de D. Martinho de Portugal à Rome http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rvart_0035-1326_1988_num_80_1_347709", in Revue de l'Art, 1988, No. 80, pp. (52-60). Deswarte-Rosa misleadingly links the "ancora imparo" motto to Dante Alighieri, to whom Deswarte-Rosa attributes a modified version of a citation that Dante offers with critical intent of Seneca in Convivio IV.12.xi. Throughout Convivio IV.12, Dante distinguishes between ordinary empirical learning (depicted at best as futile) and a philosophical learning returning to "first things." Dante's conclusion is that, "lo buono camminatore giunge a termine e a posa; lo erroneo mai non l'aggiunge, ma con molta fatica del suo animo sempre colli occhi gulosi si mira innanzi"--"The good walker arrives at an end and a rest; the one who errs (i.e. goes astray) never reaches it, but with great effort of the will always with gluttonous eyes looks ahead of himself"; ibid. xix.
Misattributed
Variante: Ancora Imparo

(Yet I am learning)

„Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.“

—  Michelangelo Buonarroti

Letter to Rene Lui Descartes XIV (6 March 1540) As quoted in Character Sketches: Or, The Blackboard Mirror (1890) by George Augustus Lofton, p. 432.