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It May Be True That There Is No God Here, But There Must Be One Not Far Off, And At Such A Moment One Feels His Presence; Which Comes To The Same As Saying (and I Readily Give This Sincere Profession Of Faith): I Believe In God, And That It Is His Wi

-Vincent Van Gogh

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It May Be True

Vincent Van Gogh

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It May Be True That There Is No God Here, But There Must Be One Not Far Off, And At Such A Moment One Feels His Presence; Which Comes To The Same As Saying (and I Readily Give This Sincere Profession Of Faith): I Believe In God, And That It Is His Wi

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Still, There Is A Calm, Pure Harmony, And Music Inside Of Me.

Though I Am Often In The Depths Of Misery, There Is Still Calmness, Pure Harmony And Music Inside Me.

A Likeness Different From The Products Of The God-fearing Photographer.

Painting Is A Faith, And It Imposes The Duty To Disregard Public Opinion.

Color In A Picture Is Like Enthusiasm In Life.

Enthusiasm For Life

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.

I Am Seeking, I Am Striving, I Am In It With All My Heart.

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 .

If One Wants To Be Active, One Must Not Be Afraid Of Going Wrong, One Must Not Be Afraid Of Making Mistakes Now And Then. Many People Think That They Will Become Good Just By Doing No Harm -- But That's A Lie.... That Way Lies Stagnation, Mediocrity.

How Can I Be Useful, Of What Service Can I Be? There Is Something Inside Me, What Can It Be?

Selfless Service

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.

Life Itself, Too, Is Forever Turning An Infinitely Vacant, Dispiriting Blank Side Towards Man On Which Nothing Appears, Any More Than It Does On A Blank Canvas. But No Matter How Vacant And Vain, How Dead Life May Appear To Be, The Man Of Faith, Of Energy, Of Warmth, Who Knows Something, Will Not Be Put Off So Easily.

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.

Everyone Who Works With Love And With Intelligence Finds In The Very Sincerity Of His Love For Nature And Art A Kind Of Armor Against The Opinions Of Other People.

What Am I In Most People's Eyes? A Nonentity Or An Eccentric And Disagreeable Man... I Should Want My Work To Show What Is In The Heart Of Such An Eccentric, Of Such A Nobody.

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.

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.

It Astonishes Me Already When I Compare My Condition Today With What It Was A Month Ago. Before That I Knew Well Enough 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.

To Express A Marriage Of Two Complementary Colors, Their Mingling And Their Opposition, The Mysterious Vibrations Of Kindred Tones.

If Your Inner Voice Is Telling You That You Can't Paint, By All Means, Hurry Up And Paint And Silence The Voice.

The Victory One Would Gain After A Whole Life Of Work And Effort Is Better Than One That Is Gained Sooner.

It Is Better To Be High-spirited Even Though One Makes More Mistakes, Than To Be Narrow-minded And All Too Prudent.

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.

Let’s Not Forget That The Little Emotions Are The Great Captains Of Our Lives And We Obey Them Without Realizing It.

In Trees, I See Expression And Soul

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.

I Want To Paint What I Feel, And Feel What I Paint.

Be Clearly Aware Of The Stars And Infinity On High. Then Life Seems Almost Enchanted After All.

To Exaggerate The Fairness Of Hair, I Come Even To Orange Tones, Chromes And Pale Yellow ... I Make A Plain Background Of The Richest, Intensest Blue That I Can Contrive, And By This Simple Combination Of The Bright Head Against The Rich Blue Background, I Get A Mysterious Effect, Like A Star In The Depths Of An Azure Sky.

For Instead Of Trying To Reproduce Exactly What I See Before Me, I Make More Arbitrary Use Of Colour To Express Myself More Forcefully.

For Loneliness, Worries, Difficulties, The Unsatisfied Need For Kindness And Sympathy - That Is What Is Hard To Bear.

What Is Drawing? How Does One Get There? It's Working One's Way Through An Invisible Iron Wall That Seems To Stand Between What One Feels And What One Can Do. How Can One Get Through That Wall? - Since Hammering On It Doesn't Help At All. In My View, One Must Undermine The Wall And Grind Through It Slowly And Patiently.

What I Need Is Courage, And This Often Fails Me. And It Is Also A Fact That Since My Disease, When I Am In The Fields I Am Overwhelmed By A Feeling Of Loneliness To Such A Horrible Extent That I Shy Away From Going Out. But This Will Change All The Same As Time Goes On. Only When I Stand A Painting Before My Easel Do I Feel Somewhat Alive. Never Mind, This Is Going To Change Too, For Now My Health Is So Good That I Suppose The Physical Part Of Me Will Gain The Victory.

If You Hear A Voice Within You Say 'you Cannot Paint,' Then By All Means Paint, And That Voice Will Be Silenced.

Painting It Was Hard Graft... In Addition Red, Yellow, Brown Ochre, Black, Terra Sienna, Bistre, And The Result Is A Red-brown That Varies From Bistre To Deep Wine-red And To Pale, Blond Reddish.

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?

There Is No Blue Without Yellow And Without Orange.

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.

And Love Makes One Calmer About Many Things, And In That Way, One Is More Fit For One's Work.

Do You Know What Makes The Prison Disappear? Every Deep, Genuine Affection. Being Friends, Being Brothers, Loving, That Is What Opens The Prison, With Supreme Power, By Some Magic Force. Without These One Stays Dead. But Whenever Affection Is Revived, There Life Revives.

Man Is Not On The Earth Solely For His Own Happiness. He Is There To Realize Great Things For Humanity.

Sometimes Art Seems To Be Something Very Sublime, And, As You Say, Something Sacred.

Drawing Is The Root Of Everything, And The Time Spent On That Is Actually All Profit.

Well, Do You Know What I Hope For, Once I Allow Myself To Begin To Hope? [...] That You Find In Your Love For People Something Not Only To Work For, But To Comfort And Restore You When There Is A Need.

I Am Not Strictly Speaking Mad, For My Mind Is Absolutely Normal In The Intervals, And Even More So Than Before. But During The Attacks It Is Terrible - And Then I Lose Consciousness Of Everything. But That Spurs Me On To Work And To Seriousness, As A Miner Who Is Always In Danger Makes Haste In What He Does.

Love Is Eternal -- The Aspect May Change, But Not The Essence. There Is The Same Difference In A Person Before And After He Is In Love As There Is In An Unlighted Lamp And One That Is Burning. The Lamp Was There And Was A Good Lamp, But Now It Is Shedding Light Too, And That Is Its Real Function. And Love Makes One Calmer About Many Things, And That Way, One Is More Fit For One's Work.

Those Dutchmen Had Hardly Any Imagination Or Fantasy, But Their Good Taste And Their Scientific Knowledge Of Composition Were Enormous.

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.

And Painted Portraits Have A Life Of Their Own That Comes From Deep In The Soul Of The Painter And Where The Machine Can't Go.

The Beginning Is Perhaps More Difficult Than Anything Else, But Keep Heart, It Will Turn Out All Right.

Rembrandt Is So Deeply Mysterious That He Says Things For Which There Are No Words In Any Language.

I Felt My Energy Return And That I Said To Myself, In Any Event I'll Recover From It, I'll Pick Up My Pencil That I Put Down In My Great Discouragement And I'll Get Back To Drawing, And From Then On, It Seems To Me, Everything Has Changed For Me.

There Is A Sun, A Light That For Want Of Another Word I Can Only Call Yellow, Pale Sulphur Yellow, Pale Golden Citron. How Lovely Yellow Is!

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

A Good Picture Is Equivalent To A Good Deed.

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.

What Molting Time Is To Birds, So Adversity Or Misfortune Is ... For Us Humans.

The Canvas Has An Idiotic Stare And Mesmerises Some Painters So Much That They Turn Into Idiots Themselves.

Love Is Something Eternal.

Whoever Lives Sincerely And Encounters Much Trouble And Disappointment Without Being Bowed Down Is Worth More Than One Who Has Always Sailed Before The Wind And Has Only Known Prosperity.

It Seems To Me It's A Painter's Duty To Try To Put An Idea Into His Work.

Love Always Brings Difficulties, That Is True, But The Good Side Of It Is That It Gives Energy.

In General, And Most Especially With Artists, I Pay As Much Attention To The Man Who Does The Work, As To The Work Itself.

We Are Surrounded By Poetry On All Sides.

My Great Longing Is To Make Those Very Incorrectnesses, Those Deviations, Remodellings, Changes In Reality, So That They May Become, Yes, Lies If You Like - But Truer Than The Literal Truth.

And In A Picture I Want To Say Something Comforting, As Music Is Comforting.

I Am Always In The Hope To Express The Love Of Two Lovers By A Marriage Of Two Complementary Colors - Colors Which Marry Each Other... Complement Each Other As A Man And A Woman Do.

Find Things Beautiful As Much As You Can, Most People Find Too Little Beautiful.

To Suffer Without Complaint Is The Only Lesson We Have To Learn In This Life

To Do Good Work One Must Eat Well, Be Well Housed, Have One's Fling From Time To Time, Smoke One's Pipe, And Drink One's Coffee In Peace

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.

Art Demands Constant Observation.

There May Be A Time In Life When One Is Tired Of Everything And Feels As If All One Does Is Wrong, And There Maybe Some Truth In It- Do You Think This Is A Feeling One Must Try To Forget And To Banish, Or Is It 'the Longing For God,' Which One Must Not Fear, But Cherish To See If It May Bring Us Some Good? Is It 'the Longing For God' Which Leads Us To Make A Choice Which We Never Regret? Let Us Keep Courage And Try To Be Patient And Gentle. And Not Mind Being Eccentric, And Make Distinction Between Good And Evil.

Modern Reality Has Got Such A Hold On Us That... When We Attempt To Reconstruct The Ancient Days In Our Thoughts...the Minor Events Of Our Lives Tear Us Away From Our Meditations, And... Thrust Us Back Into Our Personal [problems]

I Am Risking My Life For My Work, And Half My Reason Has Gone.

In Spite Of Everything, I Shall Rise Again

The World Concerns Me Only In So Far As I Feel A Certain Indebtedness And Duty Toward It Because I Have Walked This Earth For Thirty Years, And, Out Of Gratitude, Want To Leave Some Souvenir In The Shape Of Drawings Or Pictures — Not Made To Please A Certain Taste In Art, But To Express A Sincere Human Feeling.

As Long As Autumn Lasts, I Shall Not Have Hands, Canvas And Colors Enough To Paint The Beautiful Things I See.

Ah, Manet Has Come Very, Very Close To It And Courbet - The Marrying Of Form And Colour.

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.

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.

Here Everything Is So Wholly What I Consider Beautiful. In Other Words, There Is Peace Here.

Art Is Something Greater 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 A Man's Soul.

I Have A Firm Faith In Art, A Firm Confidence In Its Being A Powerful Stream Which Carries A Man To A Harbor, Though He Himself Must Do His Bit Too.

As Practice Makes Perfect, I Cannot But Make Progress; Each Drawing One Makes, Each Study One Paints, Is A Step Forward.

The Large Majority Of People Are Asleep And Do Not Wish To Wake Up.

What Color Is In A Picture, Enthusiasm Is In Life.

The Emotions Are Sometimes So Strong That I Work Without Knowing It. The Strokes Come Like Speech.

Art Is To Console Those Who Are Broken By Life.

To Save A Life Is A Real And Beautiful Thing. To Make A Home For The Homeless, Yes, It Is A Thing That Must Be Good; Whatever The World May Say, It Cannot Be Wrong.

Art, Although Produced By Man's Hands, Is Something Not Created By Hands Alone, But Something Which Wells Up From A Deeper Source Out Of Our Soul.....my Sympathies In The Literary As Well As In The Artistic Field Are Drawn Most Strongly To Those Artists In Whom I See Most The Working Of The Soul.

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.

If You Work Diligently... Without Saying To Yourself Beforehand, 'i Want To Make This Or That,' If You Work As Though You Were Making A Pair Of Shoes, Without Artistic Preoccupation, You Will Not Always Find You Do Well. But The Days You Least Expect It, You Will Find A Subject Which Holds Its Own With The Work Of Those Who Have Gone Before.

I Am An Artist... It's Self-evident That What That Word Implies Is Looking For Something All The Time Without Ever Finding It In Full. It Is The Opposite Of Saying, 'i Know All About It. I've Already Found It.' As Far As I'm Concerned, The Word Means, 'i Am Looking. I Am Hunting For It. I Am Deeply Involved.'

We Take Death To Reach A Star

Art Is But Imitation Of Nature.

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.

I See More And More That My Work Goes Infinitely Better When I Am Properly Fed, And The Paints Are There, And The Studio And All That... I Wish I Could Manage To Make You Really Understand That When You Give Money To Artists, You Are Yourself Doing An Artist's Work, And That I Only Want My Pictures To Be Of Such A Quality That You Will Not Be Too Dissatisfied With Your Work.

What Am I In The Eyes Of Most People - A Nonentity, An Eccentric, Or An Unpleasant Person - Somebody Who Has No Position In Society And Will Never Have; In Short, The Lowest Of The Low. All Right, Then - Even If That Were Absolutely True, Then I Should One Day Like To Show By My Work What Such An Eccentric, Such A Nobody, Has In His Heart.

I Am Painting With The Same Enthusiasm As A Marseillaise Eats Bouillabaisse ... I Am Painting Big Sunflowers.

It May Be True That There Is No God Here, But There Must Be One Not Far Off, And At Such A Moment One Feels His Presence; Which Comes To The Same As Saying (and I Readily Give This Sincere Profession Of Faith): I Believe In God, And That It Is His Wi

I Never Get Tired Of The Blue Sky.

I Assure You That There's A Lot Involved In Compositions With Figures. ... It's Like Weaving... You Must Control And Keep An Eye On Several Things At Once.

In An Artist's Life, Death Is Perhaps Not The Most Difficult Thing.

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.

It Is True That Every Day Has Its Own Evil, And Its Good Too. But How Difficult Must Life Be, Especially Farther On When The Evil Of Each Day Increases As Far As Worldly Things Go, If It Is Not Strengthened And Comforted By Faith. And In Christ All Worldly Things May Become Better, And, As It Were, Sanctified. Theo, Woe Is Me If I Do Not Preach The Gospel; If I Did Not Aim At That And Possess Faith And Hope In Christ, It Would Be Bad For Me Indeed, But No I Have Some Courage.

It's Better To Have A Gay Life Of It Than To Commit Suicide.

L Can Do Very Well Without God Both In My Life And In My Painting, But L Cannot, Ill As I Am, Do Without Something Which Is Greater Than L, Which Is My Life — The Power To Create.

I'm Now Painting With All The Elan Of A Marseillais Eating Soup, Which Won't Surprise You When I Tell You I'm Painting Large Sunflowers. The Idea? To Decorate The Studio, Now There's Hope Of Gauguin Living Here. I Aim At A Dozen Panels Of Sunflowers In The Room I've Set Aside For Gauguin.

It Always Strikes Me, And It Is Very Peculiar, That, Whenever We See The Image Of Indescribable And Unutterable Desolation—of Loneliness, Poverty, And Misery, The End And Extreme Of Things—the Thought Of God Comes Into One's Mind.

One Of The Reasons Why I Have No Regular Job, And Why I Have Not Had A Regular Job For Years, Is Quite Simply That My Ideas Differ From Those Of The Gentlemen Who Hand Out The Jobs To Individuals Who Think As They Do. It Is Not Just A Question Of My Appearance, Which Is What They Have Sanctimoniously Reproached Me With. It Goes Deeper, I Do Assure You.

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.

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.

There Is Peace Even In The Storm

I Do Not Intend To Spare Myself, Not To Avoid Emotions Or Difficulties. I Don't Care Much Whether I Live A Longer Or Shorter Time... The World Concerns Me Only In So Far As I Feel A Certain Debt Toward It, Because I Have Walked On This Earth For Thirty Years, And Out Of Gratitude I Want To Leave Some Souvenir.

If The Storm Within Gets Too Loud, I Take A Glass Too Much To Stun Myself.

The Only Time I Feel Alive Is When I'm Painting.

... Life Is Too Short To Do The Whole.

Life Is Too Short

Purity Of Soul And Impurity Of Body Can Go Together.

The Cypresses Are Always Occupying My Thoughts.

The Sunflower Is Mine, In A Way.

The Diseases That We Civilized People Labor Under Most Are Melancholy And Pessimism.

To Try To Understand The Real Significance Of What The Great Artists, The Serious Masters, Tell Us In Their Masterpieces, That Leads To God; One Man Wrote Or Told It In A Book; Another, In A Picture.

What Is Done In Love Is Done Well.

It Is The Language Of Nature To Which One Has To Listen.

Paintings Have A Life Of Their Own That Derives From The Painter's Soul.

One May Have A Blazing Hearth In One's Soul, And Yet No One Ever Comes To Sit By It.

My Sketchbook Is A Witness Of What I Am Experiencing, Scribbling Things Whenever They Happen.

A Woman Is Not Old As Long As She Loves And Is Loved

There Is Nothing More Beautiful Than Nature Early In The Morning.

I Don't Know Anything With Certainty, But Seeing The Stars Makes Me Dream.

...and Then, I Have Nature And Art And Poetry, And If That Is Not Enough, What Is Enough?

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.

I Was Certainly Going The Right Way For A Stroke When I Left Paris. I Paid For It Nicely Afterwards! When I Stopped Drinking, When I Stopped Smoking So Much, When I Began To Think Again Instead Of Trying Not To Think - Good Lord, The Depression And The Prostration Of It! Work In These Magnificent Natural Surroundings (arles) Has Restored My Morale, But Even Now Some Efforts Are Too Much For Me: My Strength Fails Me.

But I Always Think That The Best Way To Know God Is To Love Many Things.

But For One's Health As You Say, It Is Very Necessary To Work In The Garden And See The Flowers Growing.

Flowers Growing

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.

One Must Work And Dare If One Really Wants To Live.

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.

To Express Hope By Some Star, The Eagerness Of A Soul By A Sunset Radiance. Certainly There Is Nothing In That Of Stereoscopic Realism, But Is It Not Something That Actually Exists?

There Are So Many People, Especially Among Our Comrades, Who Imagine That Words Are Nothing - On The Contrary, Isn't It True That Saying A Thing Well Is As Interesting And As Difficult As Painting It?

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.

If One Hasn't A Horse, One Is One's Own Horse.

It Is Good To Love Many Things

I Can't Work Without A Model. I Won't Say I Turn My Back On Nature Ruthlessly In Order To Turn A Study Into A Picture, Arranging The Colors, Enlarging And Simplifying; But In The Matter Of Form I Am Too Afraid Of Departing From The Possible And The True.

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.

I Work Even In The Middle Of The Day, In The Full Sunshine, And I Enjoy It Like A Cicada.

But I Must Work On In Full Calmness And Serenity... The World Concerns Me Only In So Far As I Feel A Certain Debt And Duty Towards It, Because I Have Walked On The Earth For Thirty Years, And Out Of Gratitude Want To Leave Some Souvenir In The Shape Of Drawings Or Pictures, Not Made To Please A Certain Tendency In Art, But To Express A Sincere Human Feeling. So This Work Is The Aim-and Through Concentration Upon That One Idea, Everything One Does Is Simplified. Now The Work Goes Slowly-a Reason The More To Lose No Time.

Suffice It To Say That Black And White Are Also Colors... For Their Simultaneous Contrast Is As Striking As That Of Green And Red, For Instance.

Black And White

One Of The Hardest Things To Do Is To Paint Darkness Which Nonetheless Has Light In It.

The Great Artist Is The Simplifier.

The Great Things Are Not Done By Impulse, But By A Series Of Small Things Brought Together. And Great Things Are Not Something Accidental, But Must Certainly Be Willed.

It Interests Me Tremendously To Make Copies... I Started It By Chance And I Find It Teaches Me Things.

We Are Having Wind And Rain Here, And I Am Very Glad Not To Be Alone. I Work From Memory On Bad Days, And That Would Not Do If I Were Alone.

...to Look At The Stars Always Makes Me Dream, As Simply As I Dream Over The Black Dots Of A Map Representing Towns And Villages. Why, I Ask Myself, Should The Shining Dots Of The Sky Not Be As Accessible As The Black Dots On The Map Of France?

I Devour Nature Ceaselessly. I Exaggerate, Sometimes I Make Changes In The Subject; But Still I Don't Invent The Whole Picture. On The Contrary, I Find It Already There. It's A Question Of Picking Out What One Wants From Nature.

The Painter Of The Future Will Be A Colorist Unlike Anything Yet.

So Often, A Visit To A Bookshop Has Cheered Me, And Reminded Me That There Are Good Things In The World.

Someone Has A Great Fire In His Soul And Nobody Ever Comes To Warm Themselves At It, And Passers-by See Nothing But A Little Smoke At The Top Of The Chimney And Then Go On Their Way.

To Stick To The Present And Not Let It Pass Without Drawing Some Profit From It, That's What I Think Duty Is. ...let Us Perservere As Far As We Can Rather Today Than Tomorrow.

Admire As Much As You Can. Most People Do Not Admire Enough.

I Believe It Is One's Duty To Paint The Rich And Magnificent Aspects Of Nature. We Need Gaiety And Happiness, Hope And Love.

No, No Thought To The Winnings. One Loves Because One Loves.

The Majority Of (painters), Because They Aren't Colorists, Do Not See Yellow, Orange Or Sulphur In The South (of France) And They Call A Painter Mad If He Sees With Eyes Other Than Theirs

That I Was Not Suited To Commerce Or Academic Study In No Way Proves That I Should Also Be Unfit To Be A Painter.

Great Things Are Not Something Accidental, But Must Certainly Be Willed.

At One Time, The Earth Was Supposed To Be Flat. Well, So It Is, Even Today, From Paris To Asnieres. But That Fact Doesn't Prevent Science From Proving That The Earth As A Whole Is Spherical. No One Nowadays Denies It. Well...we Are Still At The Stage Of Believing That Life Itself Is Flat, The Distance From Birth To Death. Yet The Probability Is That Life, Too, Is Spherical And Much More Extensive And Capacious Than The Hemisphere We Know.

I Often Think That The Night Is More Alive And More Richly Colored Than The Day.

Cobalt Is A Divine Color And There Is Nothing As Fine For Putting An Atmosphere Round Things. Carmine Is The Red Of Wine And Is Warm And Lively Like Wine. The Same Goes For Emerald Green Too. It's False Economy To Dispense With Them, With Those Colors. Cadmium As Well.

The Laws Of The Colors Are Unutterably Beautiful, Just Because They Are Not Accidental.

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.

Your Profession Is Not What Brings Home Your Weekly Paycheck, Your Profession Is What You're Put Here On Earth To Do, With Such Passion And Such Intensity That It Becomes Spiritual In Calling.

The More I Think About It, The More I Realize There Is Nothing More Artistic Than To Love Others.

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.

I Don't Know If I Can Convey The Postman As I Feel Him... Unfortunately He Cannot Pose, And A Painting Demands An Intelligent Model.

An Artist Need Not Be A Minister Or A Collector In Church, But He Must Have A Warm Heart For People, And I Find It A Noble Thing That, For Example, No Winter Passed Without The Graphic Doing Something To Keep Alive Sympathy For The Poor.

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.

Christ Alone, Of All The Philosophers, Magicians, Etc., Has Affirmed Eternal Life As The Most Important Certainty, The Infinity Of Time, The Futility Of Death, The Necessity And Purpose Of Serenity And Devotion. He Lived Serenely, As An Artist Greater Than All Other Artists, Scorning Marble And Clay And Paint, Working In The Living Flesh. In Other Words, This Peerless Artist, Scarcely Conceivable With The Blunt Instrument Of Our Modern, Nervous And Obtuse Brains, Made Neither Statues Nor Paintings Nor Books. He Maintained In No Uncertain Terms That He Made ... Living Men, Immortals.

Just Slap Anything On When You See A Blank Canvas Staring You In The Face Like Some Imbecile. You Don't Know How Paralyzing That Is, That Stare Of A Blank Canvas Is, Which Says To The Painter, ‘you Can't Do A Thing’. The Canvas Has An Idiotic Stare And Mesmerizes Some Painters So Much That They Turn Into Idiots Themselves. Many Painters Are Afraid In Front Of The Blank Canvas, But The Blank Canvas Is Afraid Of The Real, Passionate Painter Who Dares And Who Has Broken The Spell Of `you Can't' Once And For All.

The Sight Of Stars Makes Me Dream.

There Is No Blue Without Yellow And Without Orange, And If You Put In Blue, Then You Must Put In Yellow, And Orange Too, Mustn't You? Oh Well, You Will Tell Me That What I Write To You Are Only Banalities.

It Is Difficult To Know Oneself, But It Isn't Easy To Paint Oneself Either.

How Lovely Yellow Is! It Stands For The Sun.

As A Painter I Shall Never Signify Anything Of Importance. I Feel It Absolutely.

I Am Still Far From Being What I Want To Be, But With God's Help I Shall Succeed.

Bookstores Always Remind Me That There Are Good Things In This World.

You Have To First Experience What You Want To Express

I Am A Fanatic! I Feel A Power Within Me...a Fire That I May Not Quench, But Must Keep Ablaze.

I've Just Kept On Ceaselessly Painting In Order To Learn Painting.

Do You Know That Drawing With Words Is Also An Art... ?

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.

I'll Start With Small Things.

Yellow Is Capable Of Charming God.

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.

I Consciously Choose The Dog's Path Through Life. I Shall Be Poor; I Shall Be A Painter.

It Is The Painting That Makes Me So Happy These Days.

For Me Work Is An Absolute Necessity, Indeed I Can't Really Drag It Out, I Take No More Pleasure In Anything Than In Work, That's To Say, Pleasure In Other Things Stops Immediately And I Become Melancholy If I Can't Get On With The Work.

The Thing Has Already Taken Form In My Mind Before I Start It. The First Attempts Are Absolutely Unbearable. I Say This Because I Want You To Know That If You See Something Worthwhile In What I Am Doing, It Is Not By Accident But Because Of Real Direction And Purpose.

Do Not Think Too Deeply About These Things - Gradually They Will Become Clearer To You

For Myself, I Declare I Don't Know Anything About It. But The Sight Of The Stars Always Makes Me Dream.

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Charlton Heston

Berthold Auerbach

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