Vincent van Gogh Quotes

Learn more Vincent van Gogh with some direct quotes from his life and career, as well as opinions on his achievements by other art historians and related artists.

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

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

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

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.

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

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

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

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.

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

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

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.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

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

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

I'm drawing a great deal and think it's getting better.

I now consider myself to be at the beginning of the beginning of making something serious.

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.

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

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.

I haven’t got it yet, but I’m hunting it and fighting for it, I want something serious, something fresh—something with soul in it! Onward, onward.

I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don’t invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made—but to be untangled— in the real world.

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

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

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

Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!

There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn't you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities.

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.

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

I come back dissatisfied - I put it away, and when I have rested a little, I go and look at it with a kind of fear. Then I am still dissatisfied, because I still have that splendid scene too clearly in my mind to be satisfied with what I have made of it. But I find in my work an echo of what struck me...

Painting it was hard graft... in addition red, yellow, brown ochre, black, terra sienna, bistre, and the result is a red-brown that varies from bistre to deep wine-red and to pale, blond reddish...

The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature.

I was interrupted precisely by the work that a new painting of the outside of a café in the evening has been giving me these past few days. On the terrace, there are little figures of people drinking. A huge yellow lantern lights the terrace, the façade, the pavement, and even projects light over the cobblestones of the street, which takes on a violet-pink tinge. The gables of the houses on a street that leads away under the blue sky studded with stars are dark blue or violet, with a green tree. Now there’s a painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is coloured pale sulphur, lemon green. I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night. In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime. But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway. It’s quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can’t make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it’s the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.

In a letter to his sister, after completing Café Terrace at Night, 1888