Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.

If one has such an encounter it is to be expected it will bring him into conflict, especially conflict with himself, because one sometimes literally does not know what to do or what not to do. But is this struggle and even the mistakes one may make, not better, and do they not develop us more than if we keep systematically away from emotions?

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

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.

My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light.

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.

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.'

I wish they would take me as I am.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

Do not become the slave of your model.

If I succeed in putting some warmth and love into the work, then it will find friends. Carrying on working is the

One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.

Occasionally, in times of worry, I've longed to be stylish, but on second thought I say no-just let me be myself-and express rough, yet true things with rough workmanship.

We have very beautiful bad weather here at present - rain, wind, thunder - but with splendid effects; that's why I like it.

It is the language of nature to which one has to listen.

At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well...we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

God sends us pieces of art so that we may see ourselves in them

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.

Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.

There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly.

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.

One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.

You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color.

Modern reality has got such a hold on us that... when we attempt to reconstruct the ancient days in our thoughts...the minor events of our lives tear us away from our meditations, and... thrust us back into our personal [problems]

I believe more and more that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of His sketches that has turned out badly.

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.

The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.

The great artist is the simplifier.

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.

... life is too short to do the whole.

The great isn't something accidental; it must be willed.

I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.

Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.

Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing as fine for putting an atmosphere round things. Carmine is the red of wine and is warm and lively like wine. The same goes for emerald green too. It's false economy to dispense with them, with those colors. Cadmium as well.

The large majority of people are asleep and do not wish to wake up.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.