Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.

I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening...like a light in the midst of the darkness.

The best way to know life is to love many things

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

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.

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

The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

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. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.

If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people's opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.

What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?

We are surrounded by poetry on all sides...

What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.

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

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, "I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others." These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

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

There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.

The more you love, the more you suffer

So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.

And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.