Top 425 Quotes & Sayings by Vincent Van Gogh - Page 2

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.

In spite of everything, I shall rise again

What is done in love is done well.

I never get tired of the blue sky.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.

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

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.

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

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

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

The more you love, the more you suffer.

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.

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.

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

There is peace even in the storm

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.

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

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

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.

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 great artist is the simplifier.

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

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

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.

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.

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 sadness will last forever.

Yellow is capable of charming God.

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.

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

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

Someday death will take us to another star.

You have first to experience what you want to express.

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

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

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

There is no such thing as an ugly woman.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Only when I fall do I get up again.

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.

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.

Art demands constant observation.

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

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.'

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

If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

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.

Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.