Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
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l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.
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When using colors to recreate a general harmony of tones in nature, one loses it by painfully exact imitation. One keeps it by recreating in an equivalent color range, and that may not be exactly, or far from exactly, like the model.
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Only when I fall do I get up again.
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What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
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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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Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
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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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What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
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To know life, one must love many things.
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Art demands constant observation.
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I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
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Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.
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Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.
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It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.
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How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.
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I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.
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The majority of (painters), because they aren't colorists, do not see yellow, orange or sulphur in the South (of France) and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs
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Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.
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There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn't you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities.
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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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Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
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One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.
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The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.