Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it absolutely.

Do you know that drawing with words is also an art... ?

I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.

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.

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

In the fullness of artistic life there is, and remains, and will always come back at times, that homesick longing for the truly ideal life that can never come true.

..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don't know the artistic side of a painting.

One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.

Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

Still there is a calm pure harmony and music inside of me.

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.

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

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

If you hear a voice within you saying, You are not a painter, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and too prudent.

Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

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?

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

I never get tired of the blue sky.