Inspirational Quotes by Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

Inspirational Quotations by Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853–90) was a Dutch painter. He is now considered one of the most eminent of post-Impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated in his lifetime.

Van Gogh was initially a preacher in a mining community in southern Belgium and decided to become an artist at the age of 27. He moved around Europe, teaching himself to draw and paint, and taking financial support from his younger brother Theo.

Van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, and sketches. After years of depression and frequent bouts of mental illness, he cut off part of his ear. At age 37, he shot himself, just when his work was beginning to be acknowledged.

Van Gogh remained poor and practically unknown throughout his life. He wrote thousands of letters to his brother Theo throughout his life. His post-impressionist work was deeply influenced by contact with impressionist painting and Japanese woodcuts. His most famous pictures include several studies of sunflowers. His paintings, notable for their beauty, emotion, and color, and a unique sense of observation, greatly influenced 20th-century art.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Vincent van Gogh

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

Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Emotions

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Love

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

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Night, Art

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Adventure

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.
—Vincent van Gogh

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

Conscience is a man’s compass.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: One liners, Conscience

Life is not long for anybody, and the problem is only to make something of it.
—Vincent van Gogh

If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Gardening

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
—Vincent van Gogh

How can I be useful. Of what service can I be. There is something inside me. What can it be?
—Vincent van Gogh

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

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

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Painters, Art, Public opinion, Painting

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Youth, Experience

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

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Maturity

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Winning

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

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Danger, Acceptance, Risk, Anxiety, Fear

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
Topics: Love, Open-mindedness, Imagination, Accomplishment, Slavery

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

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

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

I tell you, 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, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
—Vincent van Gogh

I wish they would only take me as I am.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: One liners, Acceptance, Wishes

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Love

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.
—Vincent van Gogh
Topics: Painters, Painting, Art