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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.

-Vincent Van Gogh

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Life Itself, Too, Is

Vincent Van Gogh

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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.

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I Feel A Certain Calm. There Is Safety In The Midst Of Danger. What Would Life Be If We Had No Courage To Attempt Anything?

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.

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.

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By Working Hard, Old Man, I Hope To Make Something Good One Day. I Haven't Yet, But I Am Pursuing It And Fighting For It . . . .

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.

Gauguin Says That When Sailors Have To Move A Heavy Load Or Raise An Anchor, They All Sing Together To Keep Them Up And Give Them Vim. That's Just What Artists Lack!

Occasionally, In Times Of Worry, I've Longed To Be Stylish, But On Second Thought I Say No-just Let Me Be Myself-and Express Rough, Yet True Things With Rough Workmanship.

Second Thoughts

I Can't Change The Fact That My Paintings Don't Sell. But The Time Will Come When People Will Recognize That They Are Worth More Than The Value Of The Paints Used In The Picture.

I Want To Get To The Point Where People Say Of My Work, That Man Feels Deeply.

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.

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

Life Is Too Short

Poetry Surrounds Us Everywhere, But Putting It On Paper Is, Alas, Not So Easy As Looking At It.

Many People Seem To Think It Foolish, Even Superstitious, To Believe That The World Could Still Change For The Better. And It Is True That In Winter It Is Sometimes So Bitingly Cold That One Is Tempted To Say, 'what Do I Care If There Is A Summer; Its Warmth Is No Help To Me Now.' Yes, Evil Often Seems To Surpass Good. But Then, In Spite Of Us, And Without Our Permission, There Comes At Last An End To The Bitter Frosts. One Morning The Wind Turns, And There Is A Thaw. And So I Must Still Have Hope.

For The Great Doesn't Happen Through Impulse Alone, And Is A Succession Of Little Things That Are Brought Together.

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

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

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.

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

Do Not Quench Your Inspiration And Your Imagination; Do Not Become The Slave Of Your Model.

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

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!

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.

Painting It Was Hard Graft. There Are One And A Half Large Tubes Of White In The Ground - Yet That Ground Is Very Dark.

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 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. But What Is Your Final Goal, You May Ask. That Goal Will Become Clearer, Will Emerge Slowly But Surely, Much As The Rough Draught Turns Into A Sketch, And The Sketch Into A Painting Through The Serious Work Done On It, Through The Elaboration Of The Original Vague Idea And Through The Consolidation Of The First Fleeting And Passing Thought.

To Believe In God For Me Is To Feel That There Is A God, Not A Dead One, Or A Stuffed One, Who With Irresistible Force Urges Us Towards More Loving.

You Have To First Experience What You Want To Express

At Times It Is Not Easy For Me To Take Up Living Again.

I Want To Touch People With My Art. I Want Them To Say "he Feels Deeply, He Feels Tenderly".

Exaggerate The Essential, Leave The Obvious Vague.

One Must Never Let The Fire Go Out In One's Soul, But Keep It Burning.

It Was Richepin Who Said Somewhere, 'the Love Of Art Means Loss Of Real Love'... True, But On The Other Hand, Real Love Makes You Disgusted With Art.

And When I Read, And Really I Do Not Read So Much, Only A Few Authors, - A Few Men That I Discovered By Accident - I Do This Because They Look At Things In A Broader, Milder And More Affectionate Way Than I Do, And Because They Know Life Better, So That I Can Learn From Them.

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.

The More Ugly, Older, More Cantankerous, More Ill And Poorer I Become, The More I Try To Make Amends By Making My Colours More Vibrant, More Balanced And Beaming.

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've Never Felt A Desire (and I Don't Believe I Ever Shall) To Bring The Public To My Work... A Certain Popularity Seems To Me The Least Desirable Of Things.

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

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

I Wish They Would Take Me As I Am.

Take Me As I Am

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.

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?

So Let Us Go Forward Quietly, Each On His Own Path, Forever Making For The Light.

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

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.

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.

Spring Is The Fresh Green Of Young Corn And The Pink Blush Of Blossoms. Autumn Contrasts The Yellowed Foilage With Violet Hues. Winter Is The White Of Snow Against Its Black Forms ... Summer Is The Contrast Of Blues And The Golden Bronze Of The Corn.

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

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.

Ideas For Work Are Coming To Me In Abundance...i'm Going Like A Painting-locomotive.

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

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.

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.

I Sometimes Think There Is Nothing So Delightful As Drawing.

You Will Say That Everyone Has Seen Landscapes And Figures From Childhood On. The Question Is: Has Everybody Also Been Reflexive As A Child? Has Everybody Who Has Seen Them Also Loved Heath, Fields, Meadows, Woods, And The Snow And The Rain And The S.

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

I Long So Much To Make Beautiful Things. But Beautiful Things Require Effort And Disappointment And Perseverance.

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

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

Love Always Causes Trouble, That's True, But In Its Favour, It Energizes.

Drawing Is The Root Of Everything.

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.

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.

For Great Things Do Not Done Just Happen By Impulse But Are A Succession Of Small Things Linked Together.

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.

If Only We Try To Live Sincerely, It Will Go Well With Us, Even Though We Are Certain To Experience Real Sorrow, And Great Disappointments, And Also Will Probably Commit Great Faults And Do Wrong Things, But It Certainly Is True, Thatit Is Better To Be High-spirited, Even Though One Makes More Mistakes, Than To Be Narrow-minded And All Too Prudent. It Is Good To 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 Well Done.

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

How Rich Art Is, If One Can Only Remember What One Has Seen, One Is Never Empty Of Thoughts Or Truly Lonely, Never Alone.

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

Life Is Not Long For Anybody, And The Problem Is Only To Make Something Of It.

One Can Speak Poetry Just By Arranging Colors Well, Just As One Can Say Comforting Things In Music.

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?

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

It Constantly Remains A Source Of Disappointment To Me That My Drawings Are Not Yet What I Want Them To Be. The Difficulties Are Indeed Numerous And Great, And Cannot Be Overcome At Once. To Make Progress Is A Kind Of Miner’s Work; It Doesn’t Advance As Quickly As One Would Like, And As Others Also Expect, But As One Stands Before Such A Task, The Basic Necessities Are Patience And Faithfulness. In Fact, I Do Not Think Much About The Difficulties, Because If One Thought Of Them Too Much One Would Get Stunned Or Disturbed.

One Begins By Plaguing Oneself To No Purpose In Order To Be True To Nature, And One Concludes By Working Quietly From One's Own Palette Alone, And Then Nature Is The Result.

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?

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.

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 .

Just Slap Something On It When You See A Blank Canvas Staring At You With A Sort Of Imbecility.

But You People Do Not Understand Me, And I Am Afraid You Never Will.

Ah! Portraiture, Portraiture With The Thought, The Soul Of The Model In It, That Is What I Think Must Come.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Work As Diligently On My Canvases As The Laborers Do In Their Fields.

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]

A Good Painting Should Be The Equivalent Of A Good Deed.

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.

I Believe I Do Much Better For The Time Being By First Copying Some Good Things Than By Working Without That Foundation

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

The Sight Of Stars Makes Me Dream.

It Is With The Reading Of Books The Same As With Looking At Pictures; One Must, Without Doubt, Without Hesitations, With Assurance, Admire What Is Beautiful.

If I Succeed In Putting Some Warmth And Love Into The Work, Then It Will Find Friends. Carrying On Working Is The

If I Did Not Succeed I Still Thought That What I Had Worked On Would Be Continued. Not Immediately. But There Are Others Who Believe In Things That Are True.

A Good Picture Is Equivalent To A Good Deed.

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.

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.

All Art Is A Gift. It Is First Of All A Gift That The Maker Can Do It. It Is Then A Gift To Someone Else, Whether They Pay For It Or Not. The Wonder Of It Is That We Cannot Get The Production Of These Gifts Stopped. Art Is Life Seeking Itself. It Is Our Intractable Expressions Of Love For The Beauties, Ideas And Epiphanies We Regularly Find. I Framed The Painting. It's Now Hanging In Our Den. "i Have Walked This Earth For 30 Years, And, Out Of Gratitude, Want To Leave Some Souvenir.

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.

For My Part I Know Nothing With Any Certainty, But The Sight Of The Stars Makes Me Dream.

We Are Surrounded By Poetry On All Sides.

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

If I Am Worth Anything Later, I Am Worth Something Now. For Wheat Is Wheat, Even If People Think It Is A Grass In The Beginning.

Painters Understand Nature And Love It, And Teach Us To See.

Art Is But Imitation Of Nature.

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.

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

To Die For The Sake Of Dying - I Prefer To Die Of Passion Than To Die Of Boredom!

In Spite Of Everything, I Shall Rise Again

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.

One Can Never Study Nature Too Much And Too Hard

Love Is Something Eternal.

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

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

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

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.

Painting Demands An Intelligent Model.

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

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.

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.

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 Am No Friend Of Present-day Christianity, Though Its Founder Was Sublime.

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

Perhaps Someday Everyone Will Have Neurosis.

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.

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.

There Are Colors Which Cause Each Other To Shine Brilliantly, Which Form A Couple Which Complete Each Other Like Man And Woman.

There Is Something Intimate About Painting I Cannot Explain To You ? But It Is So Delightful Just For Expressing One's Feelings.

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

I Often Think Of You All, One Cannot Do What One Wants In Life. The More You Feel Attached To A Spot, The More Ruthlessly You Are Compelled To Leave It, But The Memories Remain, And One Remembers - As In A Looking Glass, Darkly - One's Absent Friends.

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

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.

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

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

Ah! My Dear Friend Painting Is To Us What The Music Of Berlioz And Wagner Was Before Us - A Consolatory Art For Sore Hearts! And Yet There Are Only A Few Like You And Me Who Feel It!!!

If You End Up Falling In Love With Someone, It's Because Of Them. If You End Up Hating Someone, It's Because Of You.

Falling In Love

If Boyhood And Youth Are But Vanity, Must It Not Be Our Ambition To Become Men?

It Is Not Only By One's Impulses That One Achieves Greatness, But Also By Patiently Filing Away The Steel Wall That Separates What One Feels From What One Is Capable Of Doing.

If One Truly Loves Nature One Finds Beauty Everywhere.

I Dream Of Painting And Then I Paint My Dream.

In My View, I Am Often Immensely Rich, Not In Money, But (although Just Now Perhaps Not All The Time) Rich Because I Have Found My Metier, Something I Can Devote Myself To Heart And Soul And That Gives Inspiration And Meaning To My Life.

Art Is To Console Those Who Are Broken By Life.

The Wheat Field Has ...poetry; It Is Like A Memory Of Something One Has Once Seen. We Can Only Make Our Pictures Speak.

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

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.

My Brushwork Is Quite Unsystematic. I Slam The Paint On In All Sorts Of Ways And Leave Each Result To Take Care Of Itself.

I Confess I Do Not Know Why, But Looking At The Stars Always Makes Me Dream.

There Is No Blue Without Yellow And Without Orange.

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.

Well, I Am Ploughing On My Canvases As They Do On Their Fields (the Peasants). It Goes Badly Enough In Our Profession - In Fact That Has Always Been So, But At The Moment It Is Very Bad.

How Lovely Yellow Is! It Stands For The Sun.

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.

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

The Great Isn't Something Accidental; It Must Be Willed.

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.

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.'

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

I Am Always Doing What I Can't Do Yet In Order To Learn How To Do It.

Painting Is Like Having A Bad Mistress Who Spends And Spends And It's Never Enough ... I Tell Myself That Even If A Tolerable Study Comes Out Of It From Time To Time, It Would Have Been Cheaper To Buy It From Somebody Else.

I Will Not Live Without Love.

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

Often Whole Days Pass Without My Speaking To Anyone.

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.

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

I Myself Am Quite Absorbed By The Delicate Yellow, Delicate Soft Green, Delicate Violet Of A Ploughed And Weeded Piece Of Soil.

There Is Peace Even In The Storm

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.

Great Things Do Not Just Happen By Impulse, But As A Succession Of Small Things Linked Together.

One Must Spoil As Many Canvases As One Succeeds With.

An Artist Needn't Be A Clergyman Or A Churchwarden, But He Certainly Must Have A Warm Heart For His Fellow Men.

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.

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.

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.

Meaningless Things

What A Simple Thing Death Is, Just As Simple As The Falling Of An Autumn Leaf.

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.

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.

Don't Lose Heart If It's Very Difficult At Times, Everything Will Come Out All Right And Nobody Can In The Beginning Do As He Wishes.

It Is Good To Love Many Things

I Feel The Need Of Relations And Friendship, Of Affection, Of Friendly Intercourse.... I Cannot Miss These Things Without Feeling, As Does Any Other Intelligent Man, A Void And A Deep Need.

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.

Study, Analyse The Social Structure - That's Always Far More Effective Than Moralising.

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

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

You Have First To Experience What You Want To Express.

When We Are Working At A Difficult Task And Strive After A Good Thing, We Are Fighting A Righteous Battle, The Direct Reward Of Which Is That We Are Kept From Much Evil. As We Advance In Life It Becomes More And More Difficult, But In Fighting The Difficulties The Inmost Strength Of The Heart Is Developed.

It Is Looking At Things For A Long Time That Ripens You And Gives You A Deeper Meaning.

Seek Only Light And Freedom And Do Not Immerse Yourself Too Deeply In The Worldly Mire.

To The One Party, Woman Is Always Heresy And Diabolical. To Me, The Opposite.

I Am A Man Of Passions, Capable Of And Subject To Doing More Or Less Foolish Things- Which I Happen To Regret, More Or Less, Afterwards.

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.

My Aim In Life Is To Make Pictures And Drawings, As Many And As Well As I Can; Then, At The End Of My Life... Looking Back With Love And Tender Regret, And Thinking, 'oh, The Pictures I Might Have Made!'

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