Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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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
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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.
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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?
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Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.
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To the one party, woman is always heresy and diabolical. To me, the opposite.
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For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.
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The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain indebtedness and duty toward it because I have walked this earth for thirty years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures — not made to please a certain taste in art, but to express a sincere human feeling.
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I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.
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Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.
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How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.
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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.
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I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
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I believe I do much better for the time being by first copying some good things than by working without that foundation
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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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The great isn't something accidental; it must be willed.
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Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.
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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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It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.
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Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her. If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.
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I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me...a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.
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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.'
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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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We are surrounded by poetry on all sides.
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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.