Top 400 Vincent Van Gogh Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

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

— Vincent van Gogh

354. “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

355. “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

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

— Vincent van Gogh

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

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

— Vincent van Gogh

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

— Vincent van Gogh

363. “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

364. “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

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

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

— Vincent van Gogh

370. “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

371. “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

372. “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

373. “I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made...”

— Vincent van Gogh

374. “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

375. “The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.”

— Vincent van Gogh

376. “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? If you hear a voice within saying ‘You are not a painter’ then by all means paint – and that voice will be silenced.”

— Vincent van Gogh

377. “But I myself do not think I cannot make mistakes – I am too conscious of my many errors to be able to say this or that is the right manner and this or that, the wrong one. That goes without saying. But I am not indifferent, I think it wrong to be so. I think it one’s duty to try to do the right thing, even knowing that one cannot go through life without making mistakes, without regret or sorrow. Somewhere I read, Some good must come by clinging to the right.”

— Vincent van Gogh

378. “I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.”

— Vincent van Gogh

379. “If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies.”

— Vincent van Gogh

380. “All the same, I’m sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one’s will and love of self. But that’s no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life – artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don’t think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.”

— Vincent van Gogh

381. “And yet I go on; if we are tired isn’t it then because we have already walked a long way, and if it is true that man has his battle to fight on earth, is not then the feeling of weariness and the burning of the head a sign that we have been struggling? When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing we fight a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.”

— Vincent van Gogh

382. “Life is not long for anybody, and the problem is only to make something of it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

383. “But what is it to me whether my chance is slight or great? I mean, must I consider this when I love? No – no reckoning; one loves because one loves. Then we keep our heads clear, and do not cloud our minds, nor do we hide our feelings, nor smother the fire and light, but simply say: Thank God, I love.”

— Vincent van Gogh

384. “Well, being sorry and giving up doesn’t help us on; the only thing to do is to push forward.”

— Vincent van Gogh

385. “That thought, I can’t find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man’s soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion.”

— Vincent van Gogh

386. “Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet – the marrying of form and colour.”

— Vincent van Gogh

387. “But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.”

— Vincent van Gogh

388. “Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way.”

— Vincent van Gogh

389. “What else can one do, when we think of all the things we do not know the reason for, than go look at a field of wheat? The history of those plants is like our own; for aren’t we, who live on bread, to a considerable extent like wheat, at least aren’t we forced to submit to growing like a plant without the power to move, by which I mean in what way our imagination impels us, and to being reaped when we are ripe, like the same wheat?”

— Vincent van Gogh

390. “Em suma, quero chegar ao ponto em que digam de minha obra: este homem sente profundamente, e este homem sente delicadamente.”

— Vincent van Gogh

391. “The desire for women that you catch in Paris, isn’t it rather the effect of that very enervation which Gruby is the sworn enemy of than a sign of vigour? So you feel this desire disappearing at the very moment you are yourself again. The root of the evil lies in the constitution itself, in the fatal weakening of families from generation to generation, and besides that, in one’s unwholesome job and the dreary life in Paris. The root of the evil certainly lies there, and there’s no cure for it.”

— Vincent van Gogh

392. “Spero di avere un po’ di fortuna con quel quadro dei mangiatori di patate.”

— Vincent van Gogh

393. “Quero fazer desenhos que impressionem certas pessoas.”

— Vincent van Gogh

394. “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed. I want – to be bound to Christ with unbreakable bonds and to feel these bonds. To be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. To live in and for Christ, to be one of the poor in His kingdom, steeped in the leaven, filled with His spirit, impelled by His Love, reposing in the Father with the repose of which I wrote to you in my last letter.”

— Vincent van Gogh

395. “For one’s own work, thoughts and observation are not enough, we need the comfort and blessing and guidance of a higher power, and that is something anyone who is at all serious and who longs to lift up his soul to the light is sure to recognize and experience. Pining for God works like leaven on dough.”

— Vincent van Gogh

396. “Mind, as to Gauguin we must not give up the idea of coming to his aid if the suggestion is acceptable as it stands, but we do not need him. So do not think that working alone bothers me, and do not push the affair on my account, be very sure of that.”

— Vincent van Gogh

397. “Because in a time of financial crisis like the present, money is what ammunition is to a soldier in a hostile country – don’t let’s waste our powder.”

— Vincent van Gogh

398. “When I came here I hoped it would be possible to make some connection with art lovers here, but up to the present I haven’t made the least progress in people’s affection. And Marseilles? I don’t know, but that may very well be nothing but an illusion. In any case I have quite given up gambling much on it. Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone, except to ask for dinner or coffee. And it has been like that from the beginning.”

— Vincent van Gogh

399. “I am not writing to Gauguin direct, but will send the letter to you, because in any case we had better sit tight. If we say nothing more, if the reply shows that we have made such and such a proposal but that there must be some initiative on his side too, then we can see if he is keen on it. If he is not keen on it, if it’s all the same to him, if he has something else in mind, let him remain independent and me too.”

— Vincent van Gogh

400. “You have been lucky to meet Guy de Maupassant. I have just read his first book, Des Vers, poems dedicated to his master Flaubert; there is one, “Au bord de l’eau,” which is already himself. What Van der Meer of Delft is to Rembrandt among the painters, he is to Zola among the French novelists.”

— Vincent van Gogh