Vincent van Gogh Quotes

Dutch painter (1853–1890)

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.

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Alternative Names: Vincent Willem van Gogh • van Gogh • Vincent Van Gogh • Van Gogh

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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]

If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people's opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.

My dear Brother, - I am working like one actually possessed, more than ever I am in a dumb fury of work.. .Perhaps something will happen to me like what Eug. Delacroix spoke of, "I discovered painting when I had no longer teeth or breath." What I dream of in my best moments is not so much of striking color effects as once more the half tones.

I'll start with the small things

Only when I fall do I get up again.

Now I'm working with another model, a postman in a blue uniform with gold trimmings, a big, bearded face, very Socratic. A raging republican, like père Tanguy. A more interesting man than many people..

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

But he seems to have misunderstood my intention, as he got the impression that I planned to live on the bounty of my uncles; this being his opinion, he wrote me a very discouraging letter, and said I had no right to do such a thing. I certainly do not pretend to have the right, but I want to prevent this affair from ever becoming the subject of gossip in the studios; therefore I think that it is necessary for good relations between myself and the family to be re-established, at any rate provisionally and outwardly, in expectation of their changing their minds about me.

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.

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.

Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way.

But what is it to me whether my chance is slight or great? I mean, must I consider this when I love? No — no reckoning; one loves because one loves. Then we keep our heads clear, and do not cloud our minds, nor do we hide our feelings, nor smother the fire and light, but simply say: Thank God, I love.

I thought I would be understood without words

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.