Vincent van Gogh

If you hear a voice within you say “You cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that
voice will be silenced.
– Vincent van Gogh

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

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to
love people.
– Vincent van Gogh

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
– Vincent van Gogh

One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but
still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is this all imagination, fantasy? I
do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it for ever, is it for eternity? Do
you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends,
being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force.
– Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother, July 1880

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
– Vincent van Gogh

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
– Vincent van Gogh

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.
– Vincent van Gogh

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

I consciously choose the dog’s path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter.
– Vincent van Gogh

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.
– Vincent van Gogh

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only
by night.
– Vincent van Gogh

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.
– Vincent van Gogh

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 am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
– Vincent van Gogh

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

I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even
more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible – and then I lose consciousness of
everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in
danger makes haste in what he does.
– Vincent van Gogh

Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man’s compass, and though
the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s
course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.
– Vincent van Gogh

What can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us?
– Vincent van Gogh

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

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

I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
– Vincent van Gogh

The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are
absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something
worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and
purpose.
– Vincent van Gogh

If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself
headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies; if the storm within gets too loud,
I take a glass too much to stun myself.
– Vincent van Gogh

The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.
– Vincent van Gogh

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.
– Vincent van Gogh

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.
– Vincent van Gogh

I certainly hope to sell in the course of time, but I think I shall be able to influence it most
effectively by working steadily on, and that at the present moment making desperate efforts
to force the work I am doing now upon the public would be pretty useless.
– Vincent van Gogh

In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most diffcult thing.
– Vincent van Gogh

I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime
beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the
works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
– Vincent van Gogh

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like
speech.
– Vincent van Gogh

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
– Vincent van Gogh

I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.
– Vincent van Gogh

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.”
– Vincent van Gogh

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.
– Vincent van Gogh

Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their
masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book,
another in a painting.
– Vincent van Gogh

We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with
the help of words.
– Vincent van Gogh

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

I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn
a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of
form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.
– Vincent van Gogh

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
– Vincent van Gogh

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
– Vincent van Gogh

The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can’t put it off, I don’t care for anything but the
work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy
when I can’t go on with my work.
– Vincent van Gogh

I have often neglected my appearance. I admit it, and I also admit that it is “shocking.”
– Vincent van Gogh

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart
for his fellow men.
– 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

I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
– Vincent van Gogh

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.
– Vincent van Gogh

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease
searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going, come
what may.
– Vincent van Gogh

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
– Vincent van Gogh

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
– Vincent van Gogh

When I have a terrible need of, shall I say the word, religion; then I go out and paint the
stars.
– Vincent van Gogh

It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt,
without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
– Vincent van Gogh

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

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.
– Vincent van Gogh

To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is just the opposite.
– 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

But for one’s health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the
flowers growing.
– Vincent van Gogh

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.
– Vincent van Gogh