Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse.... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need.
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I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it.
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I work even in the middle of the day, in the full sunshine, and I enjoy it like a cicada.
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One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers – by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.
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The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.
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It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.
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The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
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Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance...I'm going like a painting-locomotive.
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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.
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When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
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Purity of soul and impurity of body can go together.
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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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As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
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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.
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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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To die for the sake of dying - I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom!
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Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.
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I want to do drawings which touch some people... In either figure or landscape I wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow.
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Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
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I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.