Vincent van Gogh Quotes

183 Sourced Quotes

And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.

Vincent van Gogh
Oh, Theo, why should I change — I used to be very passive and very gentle and quiet — I'm that no longer, but then I'm no longer a child either now — sometimes I feel my own man.

Vincent van Gogh
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. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

Vincent van Gogh
Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

Vincent van Gogh
How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.

Vincent van Gogh
What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.
That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.
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.

Vincent van Gogh
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.

Vincent van Gogh
To look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

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
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
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
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
Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her. If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.

Vincent van Gogh
Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

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

Vincent van Gogh
There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple which complete each other like man and woman.

Vincent van Gogh
It may be true that there is no God here, but there must be one not far off, and at such a moment one feels His presence; which comes to the same as saying (and I readily give this sincere profession of faith): I believe in God, and that it is His wi

Vincent van Gogh
I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply.

Vincent van Gogh
A likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer.

Vincent van Gogh
I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me...

Vincent van Gogh
I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that... I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work.

Vincent van Gogh
To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of Kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance.

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
If one were to say but few words, though ones with meaning, one would do better than to say many that were only empty sounds, and just as easy to utter as they were of little use.

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

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

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