Top 400 Vincent Van Gogh Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “We take death to reach a star.”

— Vincent van Gogh

52. “Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.”

— Vincent van Gogh

53. “Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.”

— Vincent van Gogh

54. “I wish they would take me as I am.”

— Vincent van Gogh

55. “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.”

— Vincent van Gogh

56. “For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”

— Vincent van Gogh

57. “The sunflower is mine, in a way.”

— Vincent van Gogh

58. “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.”

— Vincent van Gogh

59. “Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

60. “Art demands constant observation.”

— Vincent van Gogh

61. “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.”

— Vincent van Gogh

62. “It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill – it’s a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I’m all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I’ll always remain half crazy.”

— Vincent van Gogh

63. “Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.”

— Vincent van Gogh

64. “I have walked the earth for thirty years and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.”

— Vincent van Gogh

65. “Don’t lose heart if it’s very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.”

— Vincent van Gogh

66. “I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better.”

— Vincent van Gogh

67. “Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.”

— Vincent van Gogh

68. “You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream.”

— Vincent van Gogh

69. “Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.”

— Vincent van Gogh

70. “I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.”

— Vincent van Gogh

71. “Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t.’”

— Vincent van Gogh

72. “To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life.”

— Vincent van Gogh

73. “One can never study nature too much and too hard.”

— Vincent van Gogh

74. “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.”

— Vincent van Gogh

75. “No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely.”

— Vincent van Gogh

76. “The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.”

— Vincent van Gogh

77. “To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.”

— Vincent van Gogh

78. “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.”

— Vincent van Gogh

79. “We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words.”

— Vincent van Gogh

80. “To paint nature you must be in it a long time.”

— Vincent van Gogh

81. “Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.”

— Vincent van Gogh

82. “It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.”

— Vincent van Gogh

83. “One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning.”

— Vincent van Gogh

84. “It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”

— Vincent van Gogh

85. “One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”

— Vincent van Gogh

86. “Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.”

— Vincent van Gogh

87. “Christ is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.”

— Vincent van Gogh

88. “Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.”

— Vincent van Gogh

89. “Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.”

— Vincent van Gogh

90. “One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.”

— Vincent van Gogh

91. “If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.”

— Vincent van Gogh

92. “The great artist is the simplifier.”

— Vincent van Gogh

93. “One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

94. “But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith .”

— Vincent van Gogh

95. “Painting demands an intelligent model.”

— Vincent van Gogh

96. “How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.”

— Vincent van Gogh

97. “Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.”

— Vincent van Gogh

98. “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”

— Vincent van Gogh

99. “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.”

— Vincent van Gogh

100. “I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.”

— Vincent van Gogh