I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Commitment, Dedication
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Art, Night
How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Reality
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
—Vincent van Gogh
Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.
—Vincent van Gogh
The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Love
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
—Vincent van Gogh
I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse .. . I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Friendship
One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Work
Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.
—Vincent van Gogh
It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Youth, Experience
It is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to 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 well done.
—Vincent van Gogh
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
Topics: Soul
Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Mistakes
I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
Conscience is a man’s compass.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: One liners, Conscience
When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Imagination
If you hear a voice within you saying, “You are not a painter,” then by all means paint… and that voice will be silenced.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Self-talk, Confidence
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.
—Vincent van Gogh
A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn’t think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it.
—Vincent van Gogh
Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Vision, Health, Optimism
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Courage, Bravery, Courage to Begin
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
There is no blue without yellow and without orange.
—Vincent van Gogh
But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Love
No matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.
—Vincent van Gogh
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
Topics: Excellence, Understanding, Mastery
Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Humanity
How can I be useful. Of what service can I be. There is something inside me. What can it be?
—Vincent van Gogh
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Benjamin Haydon English Painter
- Baruch Spinoza Dutch Philosopher
- Henri Nouwen Dutch Catholic Priest
- Corrie Ten Boom Dutch Evangelist
- Desiderius Erasmus Dutch Humanist, Scholar
- Etty Hillesum Jewish Diarist
- Edgar Degas French Artist
- Grandma Moses American Folk Artist
- James Abbott McNeill Whistler American Painter, Etcher
- Georges Braque French Painter
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