Van Gogh Best Quotes & Sayings

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

The only thing to do is to go one's own way, to try one's best, to make the thing live. — Vincent Van Gogh

If your inner voice is telling you that you can't paint, by all means, hurry up and paint and silence the voice. — Vincent Van Gogh

Here I sit with my three old cats, getting closer to eternity all the time, on a twine chair - (Van Gogh) and me too - and it gets very depressing. What can I do? I had high hopes. We all did. Remember just outside the Tangier Consulate: "Have you met the Skipper yet?" Later I did. And now no skipping, no transport anywhere, except to a cut-rate mortuary. Where were you when I wasn't there? "Hound of Hell!!" screamed the Pop Star, and kicked the fink dog in the nuts. "Only decent thing I done." "Forget the whole thing. I have." Great gasp at this point. How much time? have I left? Not much it seems. — William S. Burroughs

We followed him through the wealthy splendor of the house. Hardwood floors. Custom carved woodworking. Statues. Fountains. Suits of armor. Original painting, one of them a van Gogh. Stained-glass windows. Household staff in formal uniform. I kept expecting to come across a flock of peacocks roaming the halls, or maybe a pet cheetah in a diamond-studded collar. — Jim Butcher

Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals. — Vincent Van Gogh

There is safety in the very heart of danger. — Vincent Van Gogh

What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. — Vincent Van Gogh

It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble and you risk your life for it. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning. — Vincent Van Gogh

Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

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

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I myself am quite absorbed by the delicate yellow, delicate soft green, delicate violet of a ploughed and weeded piece of soil. — Vincent Van Gogh

Art is but imitation of nature. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards. — Vincent Van Gogh

One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with. — 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

Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well ... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.
If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger. — Vincent Van Gogh

I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better. — Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer. — Roy Blount Jr.

The great artist is the simplifier. — Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh is the best example of how a person can be on the right track, propelled by gut feeling and some kind of strange obsessive stubborn conviction, that no one seems to understand. — Jim Rowe

The best way to know life is to love many things — Vincent Van Gogh

(...)

That winter you left me snow-blind trying to find enough details that would let you know that even though some people have perfect sight,
those same people could try to paint you by numbers and they still wouldn't get you right.
You were Monet number two and Van Gogh number 6,
a mix tape of Hendrix and Leibowitz portraits.

It makes no sense to me that we were ever together.
And my makeshift weather reports were the closest I ever came to telling you how I felt.
But you were a lover of the minuscule,
you dealt best with details.
Weighing our relationship on scales you balanced us out, and always made me feel needed.

You always asked me what to wear,
and I would stare at you as if for a second I wouldn't answer.
Of course, I always did.
Hid my affections, and my response:
"wear that smile" I said.
That one you wear when you see me.
That one you wear to bed. — Shane L. Koyczan

How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

When the bad stuff was really intense in my life, it was really what you would call writer's block. Your facility is just not as good because you feel so bad. I've heard of people right on the verge of suicide coming up with some of their best work. I wish I could think of an example, other than Van Gogh, perhaps! — John Fogerty

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

Benjamin Murphy is the best artist since sliced bread. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh. — Billy Childish

It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work ... and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

I always feel that I am a traveler, going somewhere and to some destination.
If I tell myself that the somewhere and the destination do not exist, that seems to me very likely and reasonable enough.
The brothel keeper, when he kicks anyone out, has similar logic, argues it well, and is always right, I know. So at the end of the course I shall find my mistake. Be it so. I shall find then that not only the Arts, but everything else as well, were only dreams, that one's self was nothing at all. — Vincent Van Gogh

If you work diligently ... without saying to yourself beforehand, 'I want to make this or that,' if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before. — Vincent Van Gogh

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth. — Vincent Van Gogh

But by fighting the difficulties in which one finds oneself, an inner strength develops from within our heart, which improves in life's fight. — Vincent Van Gogh

If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one's love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. — Vincent Van Gogh

Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone, except to ask for diner or coffee. And it has been like that form the beginning. — Vincent Van Gogh

To die for the sake of dying - I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom! — Vincent Van Gogh

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will. — Vincent Van Gogh

Watercolor is not my way of expression.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass. — Vincent Van Gogh

It quite often makes me feel sad that painting's like a bad mistress one might have, who's always spending, spending and it's never enough.. [Letter 630, Arles, 23 June 1888] — Vincent Van Gogh

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all. — 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

I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me ... — Vincent Van Gogh

I feel close to Marvin Gaye, Vincent van Gogh, because nobody appreciated his work until he was dead. Now it's worth millions. — Tupac Shakur

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