Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

I knew well enough that one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

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 in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after. A work that is good may not last forever, but the thought expressed by it will, and the work itself will surely survive for a very long time, and those who come later can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and copy their example.

If only we try to live righteously, we shall fare well, even though we are bound to encounter genuine sadness and real disappointments and shall probably commit real mistakes and do things that are wrong, but it is certainly better to be ardent in spirit, even though one makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly-cautious.

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success." - Vincent van Gogh

Where friendship blooms, life is reborn.

At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have no will, and hardly any desires, or none at all that are to do with ordinary life.

It's not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.

Lord, keep my thoughts green! That is something one should say over and over again.

You can live to be old or young, but you'll always have moments when you lose your head.

The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings—not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling.

Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored.

When I see how several painters I know here are struggling with their watercolours and paintings so that they can't see a solution anymore, I sometimes think: Friend, the fault is in your drawing. I don't regret for a moment that I did not go in for watercolour and oil painting straight away. I am sure I will catch up if only I struggle on, so that my hand does not waver in drawing and perspective.

Do go on doing a lot of walking and keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see. And there are painters who never do anything that is no good...

You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky. Since life, in spite of everything, is like a fairytale.

Against all expectations, the symptoms of Van Gogh's mental illness are conspicuous by their almost complete absence from his letters. Much as he chose not to paint before he had fully recovered from one of his attacks, so he refrained from writing at times of crisis. Throughout his life, admittedly, his letters bear witness to a man possessed, frequently agitated, enraged, dejected, obsessed, but never deranged, or emotionally or intellectually unstable.

In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart.

I keep hoping that I'll come up with something. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express that thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone's passion by the radiance of the setting sun.

What am I in the eyes of most people? A good-for-nothing, an eccentric and disagreeable man, somebody who has no position in society and never will have. Very well, even if that were true, I should want to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody.

I have a feeling of being at home when I am with Sien, a feeling that she gives me my own hearth, that our lives are interwoven. This is a heartfelt, deep feeling, serious, and not without a dark shadow of her gloomy past and mine, as if some evil threatened us, against which we should have to struggle all our lives. At the same time, I feel a great calm and brightness and cheerfulness at the thought of her, and the straight path that is lying before me.

Be of good heart.

But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.

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]

Aspiro alle stelle che non posso raggiungere.