Vincent van Gogh Quotes

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The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Vincent van Gogh
If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.

Vincent van Gogh
I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I'll recover from it, I'll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I'll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me.

Vincent van Gogh
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.

Vincent van Gogh
Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.

Vincent van Gogh
A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it.

Vincent van Gogh
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.

Vincent van Gogh
For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy - that is what is hard to bear...

Vincent van Gogh
Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? [...] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need.

Vincent van Gogh
As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.

Vincent van Gogh
Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.

Vincent van Gogh
We are having wind and rain here, and I am very glad not to be alone. I work from memory on bad days, and that would not do if I were alone.

Vincent van Gogh
Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.

Vincent van Gogh
You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream.

Vincent van Gogh
I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colours.

Vincent van Gogh
It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art.

Vincent van Gogh
I hope I shall be able to make some drawings in which there is something human.

Vincent van Gogh
In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart

Vincent van Gogh
I want to paint men and women with that something of the external which the halo used to symbolize, and which we now seek to give by the actual radiance and vibrancy of our colorings.

Vincent van Gogh
Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.

Vincent van Gogh
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.

Vincent van Gogh
One must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning.

Vincent van Gogh
Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of 'you can't.'

Vincent van Gogh
Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.

Vincent van Gogh
At the moment I quite often go to draw with Breitner, a young painter who's acquainted with Rochussen as I am with Mauve. He draws very skilfully and very differently from me, and we often draw types together in the soup kitchen or the waiting room. He sometimes comes to my studio to look at woodcuts, and I go to see the ones he has as well.

Vincent van Gogh
I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

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

Vincent van Gogh
My dear Theo, Sincere wishes for your good health and serenity on your birthday.1 I would like to have sent you the painting of the potato eaters for this day, but although it's coming along well, it's not quite finished yet. Although I'll have painted the actual painting in a relatively short time, and largely from memory, it's taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands. And as for the few days in which I've painted it now — it's consequently been a formidable fight, but one for which I have great enthusiasm. Although at times I feared that it wouldn't come off. But painting is also 'act and create'.

Vincent van Gogh
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.

Vincent van Gogh
If what one is doing looks out upon the infinite, and if one see that one's work has its raison d'être and continuance in the future, then one works with more serenity.

Vincent van Gogh