If I Am More Alive

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.

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.

What One Has Most To Work And Struggle For In Painting Is To Do The Work With A Great Amount Of Labour And Sweat In Such A Way That It May Afterward Appear, However Much It Was Laboured Upon, To Have Been Done Almost Quickly And Almost Without Any Labour, And Very Easily, Although It Was Not.

I Give My Soul To God, My Body To The Earth, And My Worldly Possessions To My Nearest Of Kin, Charging Them To Remember The Sufferings Of Jesus Christ.

The Sculpture Is Already Complete Within The Marble Block, Before I Start My Work. It Is Already There, I Just Have To Chisel Away The Superfluous Material.