Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass.
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The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.
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Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground - yet that ground is very dark.
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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.
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I see drawings and pictures in the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner. And my mind is drawn toward these things by an irresistible force.
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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.
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Conscience is a man's compass.
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It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.
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To the one party, woman is always heresy and diabolical. To me, the opposite.
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I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.
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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.
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The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.
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The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.
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I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.
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It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.
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To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong.
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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.
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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.
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To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture.
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As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.
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I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.
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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.
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The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts.
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I believe it is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love.