Vincent van Gogh Quotes

Dutch painter (1853–1890)

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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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In would rather die of passion than of boredom.

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 on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.

be careful not to become narrow-minded, or afraid of reading what is well written, quite the contrary, such writings are a source of comfort in life.

I know well that healing comes-if one is brave-from within, through profound resignation to suffering and death, through the surrender of your own will and of your self-love. But that is of no use to me; I love to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life-artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be a different thing, but I do not belong to that category of souls who are ready to live and also at any moment to suffer. I am everything but courageous in sorrow, and everything but patient when I am not feeling well, though I have rather a good deal of patience in keeping to my work.

The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.

It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.

The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.

One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it.

That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.

The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.

I thought I would be understood without words.

money can be repaid, but not kindness such as yours.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

I thought I would be understood without words