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, h… - Vincent van Gogh

Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

.I have done well to come here [to the hospital of Saint-Remy,] first of all that by seeing the actual truth about the life of the various madmen and lunatics in this menagerie I am losing the vague dread, the fear of the thing.

Do you know what I have been involuntarily thinking, that in the first period of an artist’s life, one unconsciously makes it very hard for oneself – by a feeling of not being able to master the work – by an uncertainty as to whether one will ever master it – by a great ambition to make progress, but a lack of self-confidence – one cannot banish a certain feeling of agitation, and one hurries oneself though one doesn’t like to be hurried . . .
This cannot be helped, and it is a time which one must go through, and which in my opinion cannot and should not be otherwise.