Vincent Van Gogh
I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.Collection: Caring
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 tooCollection: Heart
Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.Collection: Photography
I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it.Collection: Encouragement
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.Collection: Dream
Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.Collection: Eye
I never get tired of the blue sky.Collection: Tired
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.Collection: Thinking
There is peace even in the stormCollection: Storm
As you can see, I am immersing myself in color-I've held back from that until now; and I don't regret it.Collection: Regret
Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.Collection: Path
I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.Collection: Color
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death be like autumn leaves. Rabindranath Tagore What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.Collection: Beautiful
It interests me tremendously to make copies... I started it by chance and I find it teaches me things.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Fighting
To paint nature you must be in it a long time.Collection: Long
Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.Collection: Art
The sight of stars always sets me dreaming just as naively as those black dots on a map set me dreaming of towns and villages. Why should these points of light in the firmament, I wonder, be less accessible than the dark ones on the map of France? We take a train to go to Torascon or Roven and we take death to a star.Collection: Dream
The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.Collection: Ugly
One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.Collection: Self
It isn't an easy job to paint oneself - at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see - this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph.Collection: Jobs
I had a new idea in my head... this time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination.Collection: Sleep
What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it.Collection: Distance
Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes.Collection: Painting
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.Collection: Heart
If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people's opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.Collection: Art
I myself am quite absorbed by the delicate yellow, delicate soft green, delicate violet of a ploughed and weeded piece of soil.Collection: Nature
Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.Collection: Ploughing
Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person.Collection: Art
Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.Collection: Roots
It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and “que la fin de la vie humaine, ce sont des larmes ou des cheveux blancs.” What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead.Collection: Lying
For myself, I declare I don't know anything about it. But the sight of the stars always makes me dream.Collection: Dream
My great longing is to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes in reality, so that they may become, yes, lies if you like - but truer than the literal truth.Collection: Truth
Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.Collection: Essentials
One must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning.Collection: Fire
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: People
To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this lifeCollection: Suffering
What is done in love is done well.Collection: Love
So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light.Collection: Light
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.Collection: Falling In Love
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.Collection: Good Morning
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.Collection: Mistake
The more you love, the more you suffer.Collection: Suffering
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.Collection: Gratitude
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.Collection: Crazy
The large majority of people are asleep and do not wish to wake up.Collection: People
In spite of everything, I shall rise againCollection: Spite
The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.Collection: Art