50 Statue Quotes Celebrating Stoic and Timeless Beauty

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published October 28, 2023

Learn about some of the most iconic sculptures in history with these statue quotes!

A statue is a sculpture or figure and can be created from wood, stone, metal, or a variety of other materials.

Historically, statues have been used to memorialize important and heroic figures in time.

Statues have served as powerful symbols, representing:

Historical significance
Expression of art
Representation of culture

Many times statues represent famous people, animals, or abstract concepts

As such, they have left an indelible impact on our societies and cultures.

Symbolism of Statues

Statues almost always carry profound symbolism.

There are various statues that represent liberty, bravery, and spirituality and symbolize different cultural identities and ideals.

Below are examples of symbolism in statues:

The Lady Liberty

New York City is home to the Statue of Liberty.

It serves as a symbol of democracy and freedom.

Hence, this statue welcomes immigrants who are entering the U.S. to start a new life.

The Michelangelo’s David

This iconic statue is made of marble and is located in Florence, Italy.

Michelangelo’s David symbolizes triumph and courage.

It relates to the biblical story of David slaying Goliath.

The Sphinx

The Sphinx statue is located in Giza, Egypt.

It symbolizes the power, mystery, and charm of ancient civilizations.

Historical Importance of Statues

Statues also play a critical role in enhancing the historical importance of a person or object.

Different types of statues have been created to honor influential figures and commemorate the significance of events.

Historic statues usually represent the following:

National Heroes
War Memorials
Rulers and Monarchs

National Heroes

Statues of famous heroes, revered leaders, and statesmen.

These statues serve as the testaments of their unwavering devotion to their countries.

War Memorials

Statues are also erected to honor the martyred soldiers.

This is done to pay tribute to their sacrifice.

Rulers and Monarchs

Statues of kings, emperors, and queens.

These statues represent historical eras associated with a ruler or monarch.

Form of Expression in Statues

Statues also express the artistic ideals of an artist.

Creating statues is a way to display the skills and talent of an artist.

Below are the different types of expressions associated with statues:

Realism

These types of statues are representations of human figures.

They offer intricate details and expressions to create a sense of liveliness.

Abstraction

Abstract statues are far from realistic depictions.

While creating such statues, artists use different types of shapes to express emotions and invoke interpretations.

Top 10 Statue Quotes

Here are the best statue quotes that get right to the point.

1. “No one ever erected a statue of a critic.” — Jean Sibelius

2. “United States: the country where liberty is a statue.” — Nicanor Parra

3. “Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the marketplace.” — Euripides

4. “A statue remains motionless and silent, but it says much.” — Victor Hugo

5. “One day, you’re the statue. One day you’re the pigeon.” — Diane Sawyer

6. “The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.” — Michelangelo

7. “We build statues out of snow and weep to see them melt.” — Walter Scott

8. “All in their lifetime carve their own soul’s statue.” — Thomas Buchanan Read

9. “Statues and monuments and plaques are, at their heart, storytelling objects.” — Sarah Vowell

10. “It seems strange to me that someone thought of making marble statues.” — Pablo Picasso

Statue Quotes About the Skill of the Sculptor

These quotes highlight the tremendous skill needed to create a great statue.

11. “Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden.” — Richard Realf

12. “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” — Michelangelo

13. “The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed.” — Aristotle

14. “Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

15. “There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors, there might be quite a different set of statues.” — Aesop

16. “Waiting for clarity is like being a sculptor staring at a piece of marble, waiting for the statue within to cast off the unneeded pieces.” — Steve Pavlina

17. “A statue lies hidden in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish.” — Joseph Addison

18. “In building a statue, a sculptor doesn’t keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiseling away at the nonessentials until the truth of his creation is revealed without obstruction.” — Bruce Lee

19. “And if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; the sculptor cuts away here, smoothes there, makes this line lighter, this other purer until he or she has shown a beautiful face upon the statue.” — Plotinus

20 “The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense, the statue stood there for eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.” — William James

Statue Quotes About Honor & Acknowledgment

Statues often honor great people as an acknowledgment of their contribution to society.

21. “A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.” — W. H. Auden

22. “Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.” — Jean Cocteau

23. “Statues are too much like idols. Poetry and eloquence are alive; they breathe, and they make breathe.” — St. Francis of Assisi

24. “There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There’s a reasonable shot that – because of his money – we will cure malaria.” — Malcolm Gladwell

25. “Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it is my responsibility to make it better.” — Tom McCall

26. “In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.” — Santiago Ramon y Cajal

27. “Altars should face the east, and should always be placed on a lower level than are the statues in the temples, so that those who are praying and sacrificing may look upwards towards the divinity.” — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

28. “I told him they built a statue of Schultz, and then he said that a monument is a cold comfort to a dead man, and then I said that the statue was built not for Schultz, but for us–to remind us how to be human.” — John Green

29. “I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister who said confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.” — Benjamin Disraeli

Amusing Statue Quotes

Laugh along with the following amusing statue quotes!

30. “To be a statue means to quarrel with the ground.” — Stanisław Jerzy Lec

31. “A garden without its statue is like a sentence without its verb.” — Joseph Beach

32. “Imagine painting all the statues in the world in the color of the sky.” — Yoko Ono

33. “The last time I was inside a woman was when I went to the Statue of Liberty.” — Woody Allen

34. “A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.” — William Shenstone

35. “If they want to get [my statue of] the Commandments, they’re going to have to get me first.” — Roy Moore

36. “There’s a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.” — Dean Martin

37. “They linger near the back door, forehead to forehead and curved like statues as their lips whisper and brush together.” — Lisa McMann

38. “When I was a boy, we had forty-five statues of saints in my house. Ever have ninety eyes looking at you every time you have to go to the bathroom?” — Pat Cooper

39. “When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David, he is reported to have said, “It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” — Michelangelo

40. “America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other, they’d be smaller than these.” — Simon Hoggart

Statue Quotes On Artistic Reflections and Timeless Essence

These quotes reflect the profundity of statues.

41. “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” — Michelangelo

42. “When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art.” — Chris Marker

43. “The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it’s visible? That is a real question.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

44. “It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offense!” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

45. “Prometheus’ material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.” — Franz Grillparzer

46. “The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues.” — Honore de Balzac

47. “I say that the art of sculpture is eight times as great as any other art based on drawing because a statue has eight views, and they must all be equally good.” — Benvenuto Cellini

48. “Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.” — Ben Okri

49. “The scope of art is practically boundless; it does not begin and end with the painting of pictures and the modeling of statues; where there is room for workmanship, there is room for it.” — Lewis Foreman Day

50. “A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck, and it will strike us as indecent … The text is one of the components of an artistic work, albeit an extremely important component … But the artistic effect as a whole arises from comparisons of the text with a complex set of ontological and ideological esthetic ideas.” — Yuri Lotman