Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter known for his bold use of color, expressive brushwork, and emotionally charged compositions. Despite struggling with mental illness, he produced over 2,000 artworks, including iconic pieces like “The Starry Night” and “Sunflowers.” Van Gogh’s tumultuous life saw him face personal challenges and obscurity, with little recognition during his lifetime. However, his posthumous acclaim has made him one of the most celebrated artists in history, admired for his profound emotional depth and innovative techniques. Van Gogh’s legacy extends beyond art, touching the hearts of people worldwide and inspiring generations with his enduring creativity and passion.
Vincent van Gogh Quotes
01. “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
02. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
03. “Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
04. “…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
05. “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
06. “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”
― Vincent Van Gogh
07. “I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
08. “Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
― Vincent van Gogh
09. “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
10. “I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
11. “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
― Vincent van Gogh
12. “What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
13. “Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”
― Vincent van Gogh
14. “The sadness will last forever.”
― Vincent van Gogh
15. “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
― Vincent Van Gogh
16. “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
― Vincent van Gogh
17. “Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
― Vincent van Gogh
18. “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.”
― Vincent van Gogh
19. “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
20. “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
21. “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
22. “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
23. “I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
24. “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too”
― Vincent van Gogh
25. “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
26. “I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
27. “It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
28. “At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”
― Vincent van Gogh
29. “The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.”
― Vincent van Gogh
30. “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
31. “La tristesse durera toujours.
[The sadness will last forever.]”
― Vincent van Gogh
32. “There is peace even in the storm”
― Vincent van Gogh
33. “So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”
― Vincent van Gogh
34. “There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
― Vincent van Gogh
35. “I’m trying now to exaggerate the essence of things, and to deliberately leave vague what’s obvious.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
36. “To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
37. “I wish they would take me as I am.”
― Vincent van Gogh
38. “Love is eternal — the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one’s work.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
39. “Someday death will take us to another star.”
― Vincent van Gogh
40. “Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you’re put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
― Vincent van Gogh
41. “Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough.”
― Vincent van Gogh
42. “The sunflower is mine, in a way.”
― Vincent van Gogh
43. “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”
― Vincent van Gogh
44. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
45. “If you don’t have a dog–at least one–there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.”
― Vincent van Gogh
46. “In spite of everything, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
47. “I will not live without love.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
48. “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
49. “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
― Vincent van Gogh
50. “In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
51. “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Vincent van Gogh
52. “When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion, then I go out and paint the stars.”
― Vincent van Gogh
53. “Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
54. “I’m such a nobody.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
55. “It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
56. “Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
57. “I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
58. “Only when I fall do I get up again.”
― Vincent van Gogh
59. “Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can’t do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can’t’ once and for all.”
― Vincent van Gogh
60. “One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
61. “I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
62. “Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”
― Vincent van Gogh
63. “I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis….I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
64. “Don’t lose heart if it’s very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh
65. “And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, – a few men that I discovered by accident – I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
66. “But for one’s health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.”
― Vincent van Gogh
67. “What is done in love is done well.”
― Vincent van Gogh
68. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
69. “Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.
To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.”
― Vincent van Gogh
70. “I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening…like a light in the midst of the darkness.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
71. “Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well…. Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.”
― Vincent van Gogh
72. “If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one’s love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger.”
― Vincent van Gogh
73. “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.”
― Vincent van Gogh
74. “If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.”
― Vincent van Gogh
75. “Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.”
― Vincent van Gogh
76. “The best way to know life is to love many things”
― Vincent van Gogh
77. “Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.”
― Vincent van Gogh
78. “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.”
― Vincent van Gogh
79. “The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.”
― Vincent van Gogh
80. “I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.”
― Vincent van Gogh
81. “If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.”
― Vincent van Gogh
82. “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.”
― Vincent van Gogh
83. “If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people’s opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.”
― Vincent van Gogh
84. “I shouldn’t precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can’t very well get out of it.”
― Vincent van Gogh
85. “Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.”
― Vincent van Gogh
86. “What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?”
― Vincent van Gogh
87. “We are surrounded by poetry on all sides…”
― Vincent van Gogh
88. “There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.”
― Vincent van Gogh
89. “What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.”
― Vincent van Gogh
90. “There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.”
― Vincent van Gogh
91. “How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”
― Vincent van Gogh
92. “As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.”
― Vincent van Gogh
93. “The more you love, the more you suffer”
― Vincent van Gogh
94. “We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words”
― Vincent van Gogh
95. “I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.”
― Vincent van Gogh
96. “There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.”
― Vincent van Gogh
97. “So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one’s soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.”
― Vincent van Gogh
98. “And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.”
― Vincent van Gogh
99. “I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away”
― Vincent van Gogh
100. “It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation—of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things—the thought of God comes into one’s mind.”
― Vincent van Gogh
101. “How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.”
― Vincent van Gogh
102. “Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.”
― Vincent van Gogh
103. “Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made … living men, immortals.”
― Vincent van Gogh
104. “We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: “He is the one.” But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.”
― Vincent van Gogh
105. “Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”
― Vincent van Gogh
106. “In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.”
― Vincent van Gogh
107. “Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world”
― Vincent van Gogh
108. “To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace”
― Vincent van Gogh
109. “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”
― Vincent van Gogh
110. “How difficult it is to be simple!”
― Vincent van Gogh
111. “I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers – as in a looking glass, darkly – one’s absent friends.”
― Vincent van Gogh
112. “To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange”
― Vincent van Gogh
113. “Quick work doesn’t mean less serious work, it depends on one’s self-confidence and experience. In the same way Jules Guérard, the lion hunter, says in his book that in the beginning young lions have a lot of trouble killing a horse or an ox, but that the old lions kill with a single blow of the paw or a well-placed bite, and that they are amazingly sure at the job… I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don’t you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one’s feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration. So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side.”
― Vincent van Gogh
114. “I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent van Gogh
115. “Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.”
― Vincent van Gogh
116. “…to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?”
― Vincent van Gogh
117. “An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a church warden, but he must have a warm heart for his fellow men”
― Vincent van Gogh
118. “It is not only by one’s impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.”
― Vincent van Gogh
119. “I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..”
― Vincent van Gogh
120. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent van Gogh
121. “It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work…and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.”
― Vincent van Gogh
122. “In would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
― Vincent van Gogh
123. “be careful not to become narrow-minded, or afraid of reading what is well written, quite the contrary, such writings are a source of comfort in life.”
― Vincent van Gogh
124. “I know well that healing comes-if one is brave-from within, through profound resignation to suffering and death, through the surrender of your own will and of your self-love. But that is of no use to me; I love to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life-artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be a different thing, but I do not belong to that category of souls who are ready to live and also at any moment to suffer. I am everything but courageous in sorrow, and everything but patient when I am not feeling well, though I have rather a good deal of patience in keeping to my work.”
― Vincent van Gogh
125. “The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.”
― Vincent van Gogh
126. “Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the painter who dares and who has broken the spell of ‘you can’t’ once and for all.”
― Vincent van Gogh
127. “It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.”
― Vincent van Gogh
128. “The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.”
― Vincent van Gogh
129. “One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it.”
― Vincent van Gogh
130. “That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.”
― Vincent van Gogh
131. “The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.”
― Vincent van Gogh
132. “I thought I would be understood without words.”
― Vincent van Gogh
133. “I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.”
― Vincent van Gogh
134. “I thought I would be understood without words”
― Vincent van Gogh
135. “money can be repaid, but not kindness such as yours.”
― Vincent van Gogh
136. “If one loves nature one finds beauty everywhere.”
― Vincent van Gogh
137. “I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing [the divine] is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.”
― Vincent van Gogh
138. “…a woman does not grow old as long as she loves & is loved.”
― Vincent van Gogh
139. “I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create.”
― Vincent van Gogh
140. “But what I wanted to say is this: After the period of melancholy is over you will be stronger than before, you will recover your health, & you will find the scenery round you so beautiful that you will want nothing but paint”
― Vincent van Gogh
141. “So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.”
― Vincent van Gogh
142. “Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!”
― Vincent van Gogh
143. “I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.”
― Vincent van Gogh
144. “Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.”
― Vincent van Gogh
145. “That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.”
― Vincent van Gogh
146. “Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.”
― Vincent van Gogh
147. “The earth from afar shines like a star”
― Vincent van Gogh
148. “I’ll start with the small things”
― Vincent van Gogh
149. “My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like – but more true than the literal truth.”
― Vincent van Gogh
150. “Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way.”
― Vincent van Gogh
151. “Drawing is the root of everything!”
― Vincent van Gogh
152. “..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.”
― Vincent van Gogh
153. “She and I are two unhappy ones who keep together and carry our burdens together, and in this way unhappiness is changed to joy, and the unbearable becomes bearable.”
― Vincent van Gogh
154. “Modern reality has got such a hold on us that… when we attempt to reconstruct the ancient days in our thoughts…the minor events of our lives tear us away from our meditations, and… thrust us back into our personal [problems]”
― Vincent van Gogh
155. “Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more.”
― Vincent van Gogh
156. “Love is something eternal… The aspect may change but not the essence.”
― Vincent van Gogh
157. “What would be of life if we didn´t have the courage of doing something new?”
― Vincent van Gogh
158. “I would sooner paint people’s eyes than cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is lacking in a cathedral – however solemn and impressive it may be. To my mind a man’s soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a streetwalker, is more interesting.”
― Vincent van Gogh
159. “Illusions may fade, but the sublime remains.”
― Vincent van Gogh
160. “A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.”
― Vincent van Gogh
161. “How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won’t do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.”
― Vincent van Gogh
162. “I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.”
― Vincent van Gogh
163. “It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and “que la fin de la vie humaine, ce sont des larmes ou des cheveux blancs.” What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead.”
― Vincent van Gogh
164. “I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.”
― Vincent van Gogh
165. “In the fullness of artistic life there is, and remains, and will always come back at times, that homesick longing for the truly ideal life that can never come true.”
― Vincent van Gogh
166. “Fortunately for me, I know well enough what I want, and am basically utterly indifferent to the criticism that I work to hurriedly. In answer to that, I have done some things even more hurriedly theses last few days.”
― Vincent van Gogh
167. “My house here is painted the yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside, with glaringly green shutters; it stands in full sunlight in a square that has a green garden with plane trees, oleanders and acacias. It is completely whitewashed inside, with a floor made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensely blue sky. In this house I can love and breathe, meditate and paint.”
― Vincent van Gogh
168. “Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.”
― Vincent van Gogh
169. “For me, life may well continue in solitude. I have never perceived those to whom I have been most attached other than as through a glass, darkly.”
― Vincent van Gogh
170. “To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun. That’s certainly no realistic trompe l’oeil, but something that really exists, isn’t it?”
― Vincent van Gogh
171. “I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.”
― Vincent van Gogh
172. “What I am in the eyes of most people – a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person – somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then – even if that were absolutely true, then I should like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
― Vincent van Gogh
173. “If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie… That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.”
― Vincent van Gogh
174. “The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent van Gogh
175. “Dear brother,
I feel what Pa and Ma instinctively think about me (I don’t say reasonably).
There’s a similar reluctance about taking me into the house as there would be about having a large, shaggy dog in the house. He’ll come into the room with wet paws — and then, he’s so shaggy. He’ll get in everyone’s way. And he barks so loudly.
In short — it’s a dirty animal.
Very well — but the animal has a human history and, although it’s a dog, a human soul, and one with finer feelings at that, able to feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog can’t do.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them as they are.
― Vincent van Gogh
176. Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nuenen, 15 December 1883”
― Vincent van Gogh
177. “There is safety in the very heart of danger.”
― Vincent van Gogh
178. “The simple minded know many things that the wise ignore”
― Vincent van Gogh
179. “The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.”
― Vincent van Gogh
180. “I want to paint humanity, humanity and again humanity.”
― Vincent van Gogh
181. “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart .”
― Vincent Van Gogh
