If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the painful beauty of love that lingers in the heart long after its active presence has faded.
Michelangelo expresses a poignant awareness of how love and beauty can leave lasting impressions on our hearts. He implies that had he known the intense emotional turmoil and longing would arise from a past love, he might have chosen to stay blind to that love altogether, illustrating the paradox of how beauty can bring both joy and suffering.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the complexities of love and heartbreak.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
At first I assumed hate was the opposite of love. But it isn't. The opposite of love is indifference.
The solution for mankind is of a spiritual nature. It is not a political or religious solution. It's the ability to love each other. That's the only solution I see.
I don't need the stars in the night I found my treasure All I need is you by my side so shine forever
It is the nature of love to love as much as we feel we are loved and to love whatever the one we love loves.
I loved you; even now I may confess, Some embers of my love their fire retain; But do not let it cause you more distress, I do not want to sadden you again. Hopeless and tongue tied, yet I loved you dearly With pangs the jealous and the timid know; So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely, I pray God grant another love you so.
It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
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