Vincent van Gogh Quotes

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

What would be of life if we didn´t have the courage of doing something new?

Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime - I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness hypnotized even me, in my youth - but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore [ Sien in The Hague ]), etc., and not too many would-be respectable, pious ladies. To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is just the opposite.

I do not say - far, very far be it from me to say - that I myself have the rayon blanc, but I am not ashamed to say that it exists, this White Light - and that I seek it, and only this do I consider simplicity.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.

If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.

Don't be cross with me that I've come all of a sudden [to move from Antwerp to Paris]. I've thought about it so much and I think we'll save time this way. Will be at the Louvre from midday, or earlier if you like. A reply, please, to let me know when you could come to the Salle Carrée. As for expenses, I repeat, it comes to the same thing. I have some money left, that goes without saying, and I want to talk to you before spending anything.

But I myself do not think I cannot make mistakes - I am too conscious of my many errors to be able to say this or that is the right manner and this or that, the wrong one. That goes without saying. But I am not indifferent, I think it wrong to be so. I think it one’s duty to try to do the right thing, even knowing that one cannot go through life without making mistakes, without regret or sorrow. Somewhere I read, Some good must come by clinging to the right.

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

There is safety in the very heart of danger.

For one’s own work, thoughts and observation are not enough, we need the comfort and blessing and guidance of a higher power, and that is something anyone who is at all serious and who longs to lift up his soul to the light is sure to recognize and experience. Pining for God works like leaven on dough.

..Now there is in the South of Belgium, in Hainault, in the neighborhood of Mons.. ..a district called the Borinage, that has a peculiar population of laborers who work in the numerous coal mines.. .I should very much like to go there as an evangelist.. ..St. Paul was three years in Arabia before he began to preach..

You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’.

..Here I am shut up for the livelong day under lock and key and with keepers in a cell.. ..I will not deny that I would rather have died than have caused and suffered such trouble.

I've just finished a canvas of a café interior at night [''Night Café''], lit by lamps. Some poor night-prowlers are sleeping in a corner. The room is painted red, and inside, in the gaslight, the green billiard table, which casts an immense shadow over the floor. In this canvas there are 6 or 7 different reds, from blood-red to delicate pink, contrasting with the same number of pale or dark greens.