Gogh Quotes

My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh was a complete nut job! Can you imagine in this day and age, if an artist or writer that you were going to sign or host an exhibit for had just cut off their freaking EAR and mailed it to their unrequited love? Talk about a PR nightmare. No one would be willing to work with that mess – seriously! How would you feel if you were told, "Hey, umm, your next writer just cut her own finger off? No big deal. She's all right."

As artists, we're all kind of odd in our own ways. I think that should be celebrated and more appreciated – I'm not saying that more people should start to cut off their ears or fingers or other appendages – but for god's sake, stop censoring everyone to death. It makes me sick. ~ Kelly Fitzharris Coody

A chord that becomes a melodious delusion,
In polar discrepancy from blue to yellow painted,
In yellow I existed, with digoxin's deadly illusion,
Like Van Gogh's stars in a bright night untainted. ~ Selina A. Mahmood

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

It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miner's work; it doesn't advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness. In fact, I do not think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much one would get stunned or disturbed. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

But precisely because love is so strong, we are, especially in our youth...usually not strong enough to maintain a straight course.

- Vincent van Gogh ~ Deborah Heiligman

These workers," said Mendes with a gentle sweep of his arm, "have a hard life of it. When illness comes they have no money for a doctor. The food for tomorrow comes from today's labour, and hard labour it is, too. Their houses, as you see, are small and poor; they are never more than a stone's throw away from privation and want. They've made a bad bargain with life; they need the thought of God to comfort them. ~ Irving Stone

You have first to experience what you want to express. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

There are often beams in our eye that we know not of. Let us therefore ask that our eye may become single, for then we ourselves shall become wholly single. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

There are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

One association with the arts that I vividly remember was a magazine called Normal Instructor, a teachers' magazine, that Miss George would hold up with illustrations of great artworks like [Vincent] van Gogh and Rembrandt [van Rijn]. ~ Paul Smith

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

It is the painting that makes me so happy these days. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

When using colors to recreate a general harmony of tones in nature, one loses it by painfully exact imitation. One keeps it by recreating in an equivalent color range, and that may not be exactly, or far from exactly, like the model. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

What would be of life if we didn´t have the courage of doing something new? ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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? ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

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... ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. - Vincent Van Gogh ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

It is the language of nature to which one has to listen. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

As soon as something like Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A canvas needs to be seduced; but Van Gogh, he, he raped it. ~ Zouave Milliet

You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

He was still on his "two Van Goghs" point. He put his hand on the armrest of her chair. He said, "But the second Van Gogh is just a guy named Vincent. Vincent lived for thirty-seven years. Van Gogh only came to life after Vincent died. Same man, two people. ~ Victor LaValle

I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years. ~ Jerry Saltz

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Recently I've been working very hard and quickly; in this way I try to express the desperately fast passage of things in modern life.

Yesterday, in the rain, I painted a large landscape with fields as far as the eye can see, viewed from a height, different kinds of greenery, a dark green field of potatoes, the rich purple earth between the regular rows of plants, to one side a field of peas white with bloom, a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of tall, ripe, fawn-coloured grass, then some wheat, some poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills at the foot of which a train is passing, leaving an immense trail of white smoke over the greenery. A white road crosses the canvas, on the road a little carriage and some white houses with bright red roofs alongside a road. Fine drizzle streaks the whole with blue or grey lines. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

There is safety in the very heart of danger. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

(D)ying is hard, but living is harder still.

- Vincent van Gogh ~ Deborah Heiligman

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

if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century), the ancient Greek dramatists, theElizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off. ~ Henry Miller

We have very beautiful bad weather here at present - rain, wind, thunder - but with splendid effects; that's why I like it. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The significant element that is common to Rivera, Siqueros, Picasso, Pollock, Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo is the expression of pain. ~ Billy Cannon

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 ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

I was starting to think of her as the "Goth Van Gogh" on a good day or "Vampira" on a bad one. She took a little getting used to. ~ Judith Fertig

Wasn't he the one who sliced off his ear and mailed it to his girlfriend?"
"Van Gogh," said Varen, in a monotone that suggested he might be in pain.
"Van Gogh," Gwen said, leaning away, waving the apple. "Edgar Allan Poe. Close enough! ~ Kelly Creagh

…But Jessica changed all that. Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
"Here's your tea and your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those Tintorettos."
"Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate."
"I should have had that cherry cake," said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh. ~ Neil Gaiman

Purity of soul and impurity of body can go together. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, fresh
ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh,
the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love. ~ Keith Floyd

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter. ~ Jim Carrey

To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Psychiatry's a young science. Yesterday's madman may be tomorrow's genius. Beethoven and Van Gogh were both a bit loopy. In my view, most madmen are remarkable. They're explorers, travelers beyond the rim of consciousness. Not surprising if they pick up a few bugs and get sick. That's all it is, madness. Mad just means sick. If you get fluid on the lungs it's pleurisy. If it's fluid on the brain, it's insanity. ~ Clare Boylan

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Someday death will take us to another star. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

People are fond of spouting out the old cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure.
Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide. The market for his work took off big-time shortly after his death. Had he decided to stick around another few decades he most likely would've entered old age quite prosperous. And sadly for failures everywhere, the cliché would have lost a lot of its power.
The fact is, the old clichés work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clichés are clean and tidy. ~ Hugh MacLeod

Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did. ~ Mick Farren

If your inner voice is telling you that you can't paint, by all means, hurry up and paint and silence the voice. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I'm such a nobody. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Do not think too deeply about these things - gradually they will become clearer to you ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Do you know that drawing with words is also an art ... ? ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Watching the news inspires me to keep going and reminds me why I should never complain. I'm inspired by those who don't let others define them: Martin Luther King Jr., James Dean, Vincent Van Gogh, Hillary Clinton, Tennessee Williams, director Steve McQueen. They've all changed the conversation by making their voices heard. ~ Robert Piper

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forst, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence Man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men's dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die. ~ Andre Malraux

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. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

If only we try to live righteously, we shall fare well, even though we are bound to encounter genuine sadness and real disappointments and shall probably commit real mistakes and do things that are wrong, but it is certainly better to be ardent in spirit, even though one makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly-cautious. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

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

Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

For the rest of their lives, the Van Gogh children would view any walk in public as a kind of fashion parade for the soul ~ Steven Naifeh

When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I have been sent more ridiculous press notices. People are frequently comparing my work with Van Gogh ... I do hope I do not get bloated and self-satisfied. When proud feelings come I step up over them to the realm of work, to the thing I want, the liveness of the thing itself. ~ Emily Carr

One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it for ever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. - Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother, July 1880 ~ Andre Agassi