Vincent van gogh quotes

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

What is done in love is done well.

If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm -- but that's a lie.... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

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

There is no such thing as an ugly woman.

The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.

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

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

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.'

Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.

We are surrounded by poetry on all sides.

Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.

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

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, thatit 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.

The more you love, the more you suffer.

If you end up falling in love with someone, it's because of them. If you end up hating someone, it's because of you.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

Someday death will take us to another star.

Christ is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

Art, although produced by man's hands, is something not created by hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source out of our soul.....My sympathies in the literary as well as in the artistic field are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see most the working of the soul.

Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, 'What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.' Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.

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

I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble and you risk your life for it.

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.

The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts.

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 done well.

Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.

It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

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

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.

I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully.

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.

You have first to experience what you want to express.

To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life

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

Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough.

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.

Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more.

Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.

Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.

Only when I fall do I get up again.

The great artist is the simplifier.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

The more I become decomposed, the more sick and fragile I am, the more I become an artist.

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.

Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.

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.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

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.

Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.

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

The sight of stars makes me dream.

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words

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

Do not think too deeply about these things - gradually they will become clearer to you

Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.

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

If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.

I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

Doing little things well is a step toward doing big things better.

Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.

I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me...a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.

In spite of everything, I shall rise again

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

One of the reasons why I have no regular job, and why I have not had a regular job for years, is quite simply that my ideas differ from those of the gentlemen who hand out the jobs to individuals who think as they do. It is not just a question of my appearance, which is what they have sanctimoniously reproached me with. It goes deeper, I do assure you.

In trees, I see expression and soul

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.

I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.

Art demands constant observation.

There is peace even in the storm

The sadness will last forever.

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

Yellow is capable of charming God.

You have to first experience what you want to express

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.

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

The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too

If one truly loves nature one finds beauty everywhere.

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.

Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.

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

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

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

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

It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.

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.

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say "he feels deeply, he feels tenderly".

I began to paint again, even though I could barely hold the brush, but knowing exactly what I wanted to paint, I began three more large canvases... of large wheat fields under cloudy skies, and it did not take a great deal to express sadness and loneliness... I believe these paintings say what words cannot.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

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

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.

In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.

All art is a gift. It is first of all a gift that the maker can do it. It is then a gift to someone else, whether they pay for it or not. The wonder of it is that we cannot get the production of these gifts stopped. Art is life seeking itself. It is our intractable expressions of love for the beauties, ideas and epiphanies we regularly find. I framed the painting. It's now hanging in our den. "I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent.

I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it.

Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.

Great things do not just happen by impulse, but as a succession of small things linked together.

Conscience is a man's compass.

If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I never get tired of the blue sky.

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

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

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

Love is eternal, the aspect may change, but not the essence.