Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

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

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

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

Drawing is the root of everything.

To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it, that's what I think duty is. ...let us perservere as far as we can rather today than tomorrow.

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

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.

To die for the sake of dying - I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom!

Suffice it to say that black and white are also colors... for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance.

To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.

I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.

Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.

I assure you that there's a lot involved in compositions with figures. ... It's like weaving... you must control and keep an eye on several things at once.

I will not live without love.

I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening...like a light in the midst of the darkness.

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.

Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death be like autumn leaves. Rabindranath Tagore What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.

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.

Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.

As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it absolutely.

Someday death will take us to another star.

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

Art demands constant observation.

I would like to leave this world and never return. I severed my ear, but how I wish that I had severed my heart. I shall never amount to anything.

I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.

What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.

Perhaps someday everyone will have neurosis.

For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

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.

Do you know that drawing with words is also an art... ?

If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one's love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger.

Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance...I'm going like a painting-locomotive.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner. And my mind is drawn toward these things by an irresistible force.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

I want to paint what I feel, and feel what I paint.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

Love is something eternal.

My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.

There is nothing more beautiful than nature early in the morning.

Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.

Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone.

I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.

The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.

The only thing to do is to go one's own way, to try one's best, to make the thing live.

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.

Do not become the slave of your model.

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.

Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.