When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there. By witn… - Vincent van Gogh

Poor Gauguin has no luck. I am very much afraid that in his case convalescence will last even longer than the fortnight which he has had to spend in bed. My God! Shall we ever see a generation of artists with healthy bodies! Sometimes I am perfectly furious with myself, for it isn’t good enough to be either more or less ill than the rest; the ideal would be a constitution tough enough to live till eighty, and besides that, blood in one’s veins that would be right good blood. It would be some comfort, however, if one could think that a generation of more fortunate artists was to come.

Whenever I tell Pa anything, it's all just idle talk to him, and certainly no less so to Ma, and I also find Pa and Ma's sermons and ideas about God, people, morality, virtue, almost complete nonsense. I also read the Bible sometimes, just as I sometimes read Michelet or Balzac or Eliot, but I see completely different things in the Bible than Pa sees, and I can't agree at all with what Pa makes of it in his petty, academic way.

.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.