Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.
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One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
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Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
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One can never study nature too much and too hard
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I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.
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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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What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
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My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.
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Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone, except to ask for diner or coffee. And it has been like that form the beginning.
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I am painting with the same enthusiasm as a Marseillaise eats bouillabaisse ... I am painting big sunflowers.
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To know life, one must love many things.
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It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified. Theo, woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel; if I did not aim at that and possess faith and hope in Christ, it would be bad for me indeed, but no I have some courage.
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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.
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Only when I fall do I get up again.
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I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.
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And in a picture I want to say something comforting, as music is comforting.
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I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.
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My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.
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One must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning.
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The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
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Art is jealous, and demands our whole strength ... .
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For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
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Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
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In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.