Vincent Van Gogh famous quotes

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspirational #Life #Positive

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspirational #Motivational #Spiritual

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

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

#Flower #Grows #Walks

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

#World #Good Things #Bookshops

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Good Morning #Summer #Believe

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

#Art #Practice #Drawing

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Life #Beautiful #Art

There is peace even in the storm
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Storm

What is done in love is done well.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Love Is #Done #Wells

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspirational #Motivational #Perseverance

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Brother #Caring #Magic

Only when I fall do I get up again.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Fall

There is no such thing as an ugly woman.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Women #Ugly #Ugly Women

The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Together #Done #Impulse

Occasionally, in times of worry, I've longed to be stylish, but on second thought I say no-just let me be myself-and express rough, yet true things with rough workmanship.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Worry #Second Thoughts #Stylish

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

#Love #Nature #Art

Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Calm #Harmony #Stills

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Nature #Stars #Ignorance

The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Revenge #Color #Wish

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspirational #Dream #Art

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Heart #Eye #People

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Art #Firsts #Painting

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Needs #Infinite #Feels

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Friendship #Laughter #Honesty

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

#Art #Creativity #Enough

Do not become the slave of your model.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Slave #Models

I tried to express through red and green the terrible passions of humanity.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Passion #Humanity #Red

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Heart #Thinking #Yellow

Someday death will take us to another star.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Stars #Someday

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

#Want #Had Enough #Harmony

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

#Time #Giving #Long

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

#Flower #Garden #Growing

My sketchbook is a witness of what I am experiencing, scribbling things whenever they happen.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Sketchbooks #Witness

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Essentials #Obvious

Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Beautiful #Mysterious #Excitement

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Baby #Morning #Ocean

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

#Light #Forever #Path

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

#Inspirational #Dream #Art

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

#Beautiful #Book #Reading

I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Thinking #Drawing #Sometimes

Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Great Things

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Crazy #Artist #Half

Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? [...] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#People #Needs #Comfort

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

#Art #People #Want

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

#Fire #May #Quench

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

#Dream #Stars

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.'
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Mean #Hunting #Artist

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Thinking #People #Wheat

Drawing is the root of everything.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Roots #Drawing

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

#Art #Would Be #Opinion

I never get tired of the blue sky.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Tired #Blue #Sky

Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Beautiful #People #Littles

You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Color #Lines

Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#World #Bookstores #Good Things

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Beautiful #Perseverance #Disappointment

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspiration #Heart #Views

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Inspirational #Art #People

You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn't have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Brother #Powerful #Spring

But what's your ultimate goal, you'll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Ideas #Goal #Shapes

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

#Real #Taken #Mind

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Fighting #Evil #Battle

It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miner’s work; it doesn’t advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness. In fact, I do not think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much one would get stunned or disturbed.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Disappointment #Thinking #Drawing

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#People #Disease #Melancholy

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Distance #Believe #Paris

I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Believe #Desire #Popularity

To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Coffee #Drink #Good Work

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
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Heart #Men #Sea

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

#Together #Littles #Little Things

Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Color #Enthusiasm

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

#Artist #Life Death #Difficult

To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones...
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Two #Color #Vibrations

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

#Being Alone #Soul #May

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

#Men #Humanity #Earth

I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Memories #Thinking #Glasses

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Life #Night #Giving

I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Anxiety #Feelings #Matter

Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Mistress #Painting #Study

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Yellow #Lovely #Sun

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

#Depth #Misery #Harmony

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Art #Outcomes #Sometimes

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

#Half #Gone #Reason

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

#Couple #Men #Color

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Eye #Weaving #Figures

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Beautiful #Dream #Scary

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Deeds #Good Deeds

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

#Love #Inspirational #God

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Love #Loneliness #Artist

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

#Life #True Love #Art

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Love #Beauty #Mental Health

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Heart #Artist #Fire

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

#Inspiration #Science #Artist

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

#Stars #Infinity #Enchanted

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Drawing

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.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Time #Understanding #Masters

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

#Art #Men #Fellow Man

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Life #Insightful #Want

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Orange #Blue #Yellow

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

#Artist #Paper #Easy

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
-- Vincent Van Gogh

#Faith #Art #Public Opinion