Quotes from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?"
"Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“What we know of others is our personal secret.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.
”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“...and rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“It's pleasant to get used to the expensive, the soft, the comfortable. Once you're addicted, it's so easy to become a sycophant, to trim the sails of your judgment in order to be kept on. The next step is to change your work to please those in power, and that is death to the sculptor.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“We are giving the world back to man, and man back to himself. Man shall no longer be vile, but noble. We shall not destroy his mind in return for an immortal soul. Without a free, vigorous and creative mind, man is but an animal, and he will die like an animal, without any shred of a soul. We return to man his arts, his literature, his sciences, his independence to think and feel as an individual, not to be bound to dogma like a slave, to rot in his chains.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“The sculptor is master of time; he can change his subjects forward or back.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born?”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of
his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one ”Go!”, his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat
and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Plato Four, the humanists had taught him that man was the center of the universe; and this was never more demonstrable that when he stood looking upward and found himself, a lone individual, serving as the central pole holding up the tarpaulin of sun and clouds, moon and stars, knowing that, lone or abandoned as he might feel, without his support the heavens would fall.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“L'arte è fatta per coloro che si sente indegno senza di essa.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“His sculpture would have joy in it, try to capture the sense of fertility of Dionysus, the nature god, the power of the intoxicating drink that enabled a man to laugh and sing and forget for a while the sorrow of his earthly miseries. And then, perhaps, at the same time he could portray the decay that came with too much forgetfulness, that he saw all around him, when man surrendered his moral and spiritual values for the pleasures of the
flesh. The Bacchus would be the central figure of his theme, a human being rather than a demigod; then there would be a child of about seven, sweet-
faced, lovable, nibbling from a bunch of grapes. His composition would have death in it too; the tiger, who liked wine and was loved by Bacchus, with the deadest, dead skin and head conceivable”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“That was how his pen finally designed his sculpture; in the center the weak,
confused, arrogant, soon to be destroyed young man holding cup a loft, behind him the idyllic child, clear-eyed, munching his grapes, symbol of joy
; between them the tiger skin. The Bacchus, hollow within himself, flabby, reeling, already old; the Satyr,
eternally young and gay, symbol of man’s childhood and naughty innocence”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“How could he have been so stupid, so blind? David pictured after Goliath could be no one but the biblical David, a special individual. He was not content to portray one man; he was seeking universal man, Everyman, all of whom,from the beginning of time,
had faced a decision to strike for freedom”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“He turned, stood above the crowd gazing up at him. There was silence in the
square. And yet he had never felt such complete communication. It was as though they read each other’s thoughts, as though they were one and the same: they were part of him,every Florentine standing below, eyes turned up to him, and he was a part of them.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Naći će se drugi papa, ali nikad više neće biti Botičelija.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy

About the author

Popular quotes

“Life, he says, doesn’t have to be so bad all the time. We don’t have to be anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best we can.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Where Things Come Back

“The truth is, I want my choice to drive a knife right through my father’s heart, to pierce him with as much pain and embarrassment and disappointment as possible. There is only one choice that can do that.”
― Veronica Roth, quote from The Transfer

“He is holding a book.
Inside the book is the Universe.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from The Sandman: Endless Nights

“There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut.

There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.

The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine.


On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy.

Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair.

The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?”
― Charlotte Brontë, quote from Shirley

“People and relationships never stop being a work in progress”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Vision in White

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.