Top 400 Vincent Van Gogh Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.”

— Vincent van Gogh

252. “What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.”

— Vincent van Gogh

253. “Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.”

— Vincent van Gogh

254. “Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more.”

— Vincent van Gogh

255. “I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.”

— Vincent van Gogh

256. “The more I become decomposed, the more sick and fragile I am, the more I become an artist.”

— Vincent van Gogh

257. “The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature.”

— Vincent van Gogh

258. “Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone, except to ask for diner or coffee. And it has been like that form the beginning.”

— Vincent van Gogh

259. “I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully.”

— Vincent van Gogh

260. “I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.”

— Vincent van Gogh

261. “Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored.”

— Vincent van Gogh

262. “As you can see, I am immersing myself in color-I’ve held back from that until now; and I don’t regret it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

263. “But are not this struggle and even the mistakes one may make better, and do they not develop us more, than if we kept systematically away from emotions?”

— Vincent van Gogh

264. “So don’t study and swot too much, for that makes one sterile. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don’t take art or love too seriously- there is very little one can do about it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

265. “But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap.”

— Vincent van Gogh

266. “It’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.”

— Vincent van Gogh

267. “I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.”

— Vincent van Gogh

268. “In a painting I want to say something comforting.”

— Vincent van Gogh

269. “I work even in the middle of the day, in the full sunshine, and I enjoy it like a cicada.”

— Vincent van Gogh

270. “One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.”

— Vincent van Gogh

271. “I believe more and more that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of His sketches that has turned out badly.”

— Vincent van Gogh

272. “What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.”

— Vincent van Gogh

273. “You may know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.”

— Vincent van Gogh

274. “Purity of soul and impurity of body can go together.”

— Vincent van Gogh

275. “It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble and you risk your life for it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

276. “I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.”

— Vincent van Gogh

277. “If one were to say but few words, though ones with meaning, one would do better than to say many that were only empty sounds, and just as easy to utter as they were of little use.”

— Vincent van Gogh

278. “I keep hoping that I’ll come up with something. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express that thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun.”

— Vincent van Gogh

279. “A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved.”

— Vincent van Gogh

280. “If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one’s love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger.”

— Vincent van Gogh

281. “In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart.”

— Vincent van Gogh

282. “Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.”

— Vincent van Gogh

283. “No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves.”

— Vincent van Gogh

284. “How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.”

— Vincent van Gogh

285. “One must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.”

— Vincent van Gogh

286. “I have had no “guidance or teaching” from others to speak of, but taught myself; no wonder my technique, considered superficially, differs from that of others. But that’s no reason for my work to remain unsaleable. I feel pretty sure that the large “Sorrow,” “The Old Woman of the Geest,” the “Old Man,” and others, will find a purchaser someday.”

— Vincent van Gogh

287. “Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

288. “My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.”

— Vincent van Gogh

289. “A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn’t think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

290. “What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

291. “I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.”

— Vincent van Gogh

292. “When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly ’til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling.”

— Vincent van Gogh

293. “If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

294. “Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle – more like music and less like sculpture – and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.”

— Vincent van Gogh

295. “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.”

— Vincent van Gogh

296. “If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?”

— Vincent van Gogh

297. “Fortunately for me, I know well enough what I want, and am basically utterly indifferent to the criticism that I work to hurriedly. In answer to that, I have done some things even more hurriedly theses last few days.”

— Vincent van Gogh

298. “Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion – and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.”

— Vincent van Gogh

299. “I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colours.”

— Vincent van Gogh

300. “There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly.”

— Vincent van Gogh