Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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An artist need not be a minister or a collector in church, but he must have a warm heart for people, and I find it a noble thing that, for example, no winter passed without The Graphic doing something to keep alive sympathy for the poor.
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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.
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Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion - and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.
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The sight of stars makes me dream.
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A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved
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I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.
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Study, analyse the social structure - that's always far more effective than moralising.
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I will not live without love.
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At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well...we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.
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We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words
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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?
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...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
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My great longing is to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes in reality, so that they may become, yes, lies if you like - but truer than the literal truth.
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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.
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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.
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Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.
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You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color.
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Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.
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But on the road that I'm on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don't study, if I don't keep on trying, then I'm lost, then woe betide me. That's how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that's what's needed.
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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]
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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.
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To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky.
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I never get tired of the blue sky.
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Do not think too deeply about these things - gradually they will become clearer to you