Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.

There are two ways of reasoning about painting: how to do it and how not to do it; how to d it with great deal of drawing and not much colour, how not to do it with a great deal of colour and not much drawing.

I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards.

To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of stereoscopic realism, but is it not something that actually exists?

Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.

It isn't an easy job to paint oneself - at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see - this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart.

The great isn't something accidental; it must be willed.

I began to paint again, even though I could barely hold the brush, but knowing exactly what I wanted to paint, I began three more large canvases ... of large wheat fields under cloudy skies, and it did not take a great deal to express sadness and loneliness ... I believe these paintings say what words cannot.

There are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast.

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.

I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.

Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.

If you end up falling in love with someone, it's because of them. If you end up hating someone, it's because of you.

Do you know what I have been involuntarily thinking, that in the first period of an artist's life, one unconsciously makes it very hard for oneself – by a feeling of not being able to master the work – by an uncertainty as to whether one will ever master it – by a great ambition to make progress, but a lack of self-confidence – one cannot banish a certain feeling of agitation, and one hurries oneself though one doesn't like to be hurried . . .
This cannot be helped, and it is a time which one must go through, and which in my opinion cannot and should not be otherwise.

Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride; on the contrary, it is that much more of a stimulus to fight for victory.

For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can't really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that's to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can't get on with the work.

There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple which complete each other like man and woman.

How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.

To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones ...

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.

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

If I did not succeed I still thought that what I had worked on would be continued. Not immediately. But there are others who believe in things that are true.

So don't study and swot too much, for that makes one sterile. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don't take art or love too seriously- there is very little one can do about it

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.

The only thing to do is to go one's own way, to try one's best, to make the thing live.

I feel that there's nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it, that's what I think duty is ... let us perservere as far as we can rather today than tomorrow.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

Love is something eternal ... The aspect may change but not the essence.

As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it Absolutely.

Everything on earth changes - we have no abiding city here - it is the experience of everybody. That it is God's will that we should part with what is dearest on earth - we ourselves change in many respects, we are not what we once were, we shall not remain what we are now.

And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance ... I'm going like a painting-locomotive.

You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn't have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.

I prefer painting people's eyes to cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be - a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me.

Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.

Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.

One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.

The majority of (painters), because they aren't colorists, do not see yellow, orange or sulphur in the South (of France) and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs

I would like to leave this world and never return. I severed my ear, but how I wish that I had severed my heart. I shall never amount to anything.

…I have a feeling of being at home when I am with Sien, a feeling that she gives me my own hearth, that our lives are interwoven. This is a heartfelt, deep feeling, serious, and not without a dark shadow of her gloomy past and mine, as if some evil threatened us, against which we should have to struggle all our lives. At the same time, I feel a great calm and brightness and cheerfulness at the thought of her, and the straight path that is lying before me.

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.

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.

One must seize the reality of one's fate and that's that.

I believe it is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colours.

If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.

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.

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.

That thought, I can't find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man's soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion.

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.

It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.

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.

To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.

There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly'.

Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.

And then there are painters who never do anything that is no good, who cannot do anything bad, just as there are ordinary people who can do nothing but good.

Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.

Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.

I am painting with the same enthusiasm as a Marseillaise eats bouillabaisse ... I am painting big sunflowers.

It is the language of nature to which one has to listen.

If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies.

Study, analyse the social structure - that's always far more effective than moralising.

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.

What kind of love was it that I felt when I was twenty? It is difficult to define - my physical passions were very weak then, perhaps because of a few years of great poverty and hard work. But my intellectual passions were strong, meaning that without asking anything in return, without wanting any pity, I wanted only to give, but not to receive. Foolish, wrong, exaggerated, proud, rash - for in love one must not only give, but also take; and, reversing it, one must not only take but also give.

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her - it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton - a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room.

Do go on doing a lot of walking and keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see. And there are painters who never do anything that is no good...

...I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.

It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified. Theo, woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel; if I did not aim at that and possess faith and hope in Christ, it would be bad for me indeed, but no I have some courage.

Conscience is a man's compass.

To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of Kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance.

It quite often makes me feel sad that painting's like a bad mistress one might have, who's always spending, spending and it's never enough.. [Letter 630, Arles, 23 June 1888]

Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? [ ... ] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need.

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.

What is done in love is done well.

One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.

A likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer.

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Perhaps someday everyone will have neurosis.

You have first to experience what you want to express.

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.

I am an artist ... It's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the opposite of saying, 'I know all about it. I've already found it.' As far as I'm concerned, the word means, 'I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.'

You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.

There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing - on the contrary, isn't it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it?

Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.