Vincent van Gogh Quotes

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

It is true, however, that first impressions often change, for we know only too well that all is not gold that glitters and that though there may be a bright dawn, there is also a dark midnight and a burning, oppressive heat at noon.

Hier j'étais au soleil couchant dans une bruyère pierreuse où croissent des chênes très petits et tordus, dans le fond une ruine sur la colline, et dans le vallon du blé. C'était romantique, on ne peut davantage, à la Monticelli, le soleil versait des rayons très jaunes sur les buissons et le terrain, absolument une pluie d'or. Et toutes les lignes étaient belles, l'ensemble d'une noblesse charmante. On n'aurait pas du tout été surpris de voir surgir soudainement des cavaliers et des dames, revenant d'une chasse au faucon, ou d'entendre la voix d'un vieux troubadour provençal. Les terrains semblaient violets, les lointains bleus. J'en ai rapporté une étude d'ailleurs, mais qui reste bien en dessous de ce que j'avais voulu faire.

In would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Dar din tulburarea de nedescris a sufletului meu a țâșnit în mine o idee, aidoma unei lumini strălucitoare în noapte: cine se poate resemna să se resemneze, dar, dacă ești în stare să crezi, atunci crede! Și m-am ridicat de jos, nu ca un om resemnat, ci ca un credincios și n-am mai avut alt gând decât: ea, nimeni alta.

How I wish we could spend a couple of Christmas days together, for instance — I would also dearly like to have you in my studio once more.

I, too, have been toiling quite hard recently, precisely because I was full of the Christmas feeling, and feeling isn’t enough, one must bring it into one’s work.

So I’m now occupied with two large heads of an orphan man, with his white beard and old-fashioned, old top hat.

This chap has the sort of old, lively face that one would wish for beside a cosy Christmas fire.

We walked along Buitenkant and there by the sand works at the Oosterspoor [former train-station in Amsterdam], I can' tell you how beautiful it was there in the twilight. Rembrandt, Michel, [French Barbizon painter] and others have painted it, the ground dark, the sky still lit by the glow of the sun, already gone down, the row of houses and towers standing out above, the lights in the windows everywhere, everything reflected in the water. And the people and carriages like small black figures everywhere. Like one sometimes sees in a Rembrandt. And it put us in such a mood that we began talking about all sorts of things.

Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more.

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

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 again to think instead of trying not to think - good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings [of Arles ] has helped my morale.

...I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.

The best way to know God is to love many things.

You will say that I am not a success - vaincre or être vaincu, [to conquer or to be conquered], it doesn't matter to me, one has feeling and movement in any event, and they are more akin than they may seem to be or than can be put into words.

I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.

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