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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.

-Vincent Van Gogh

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The World Concerns Me

Vincent Van Gogh

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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.

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We Take Death To Reach A Star

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

If One Truly Loves Nature One Finds Beauty Everywhere.

I See Drawings And Pictures In The Poorest Huts, In The Dirtiest Corner. And My Mind Is Drawn Toward These Things By An Irresistible Force.

The Worse I Get Along With People The More I Learn To Have Faith In Nature And Concentrate On Her.

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

The Mediterranean Has The Color Of Mackerel, Changeable I Mean. You Don't Always Know If It Is Green Or Violet, You Can't Even Say It's Blue, Because The Next Moment The Changing Reflection Has Taken On A Tint Of Rose Or Gray.

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.

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

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.

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

Art Is Jealous, And Demands Our Whole Strength ... .

Art Is To Console Those Who Are Broken By Life.

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.

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

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.

Art Demands Persistent Work, Work In Spite Of Everything, And Continuous Observations. By Persistent, I Mean Not Only Continuous Work, But Also Not Giving Up Your Opinion At The Bidding Of Such And Such A Person.

I Put My Heart And My Soul Into My Work, And Have Lost My Mind In The Process.

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.

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

Whatever Plan One Makes, There Is A Hidden Difficulty Somewhere.

The Sunflower Is Mine, In A Way.

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

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

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.

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 Dream Of Painting And Then I Paint My Dream.

When Using Colors To Recreate A General Harmony Of Tones In Nature, One Loses It By Painfully Exact Imitation. One Keeps It By Recreating In An Equivalent Color Range, And That May Not Be Exactly, Or Far From Exactly, Like The Model.

The More I Become Decomposed, The More Sick And Fragile I Am, The More I Become An Artist.

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

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

Do Not Become The Slave Of Your Model.

I Believe That One Thinks Much More Soundly If The Thoughts Arise From Direct Contact With Things, Than If One Looks At Things With The Aim Of Finding This Or That In Them.

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

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

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

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]

Oh! I Must Somehow Manage To Do A Figure In A Few Strokes.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Let Us Keep Courage And Try To Be Patient And Gentle. And Let Us Not Mind Being Eccentric, And Make Distinction Between Good And Evil.

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

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.

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

One Can Never Study Nature Too Much And Too Hard

The Sadness Will Last Forever.

I Wanted To Make People Think Of A Totally Different Way Of Living From That Which We, Educated People, Live. I Would Absolutely Not Want Anyone To Find It Beautiful Or Good Without A Thought.

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.

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

Selfless Service

When I Have A Terrible Need Of - Shall I Say The Word - Religion. Then I Go Out And Paint The Stars.

As We Advance In Life It Becomes More And More Difficult, But In Fighting The Difficulties The Inmost Strength Of The Heart Is Developed.

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.

It Is A Pity That, As One Gradually Gains Experience, One Loses One's Youth.

Love Is Something Eternal.

If One Has Such An Encounter It Is To Be Expected It Will Bring Him Into Conflict, Especially Conflict With Himself, Because One Sometimes Literally Does Not Know What To Do Or What Not To Do. But Is This Struggle And Even The Mistakes One May Make, Not Better, And Do They Not Develop Us More Than If We Keep Systematically Away From Emotions?

I Want To Paint Men And Women With That Something Of The External Which The Halo Used To Symbolize, And Which We Now Seek To Give By The Actual Radiance And Vibrancy Of Our Colorings.

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

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

Color In A Picture Is Like Enthusiasm In Life.

Enthusiasm For Life

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

I'll Start With Small Things.

It Is Good To Love Many Things

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.

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

Only When I Fall Do I Get Up Again.

Making Mistakes

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

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.

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.

We Spent Our Whole Lives In Unconsous Excercise Of The Art Of Expressing Our Thoughts With The Help Of Words

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Believe That It May Happen That One Will Succeed, And One Must Not Begin To Despair, Even Though Defeated Here And There; And Even Though One Sometimes Feels A Kind Of Decay, Though Things Go Differently From The Expected, It Is Necessary To Take Heart Again And New Courage. For 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. What Is Drawing? How Does One Learn It? It Is Working Through An Invisible Iron Wall That Seems To Stand Between What One Feels And What One Can Do.

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

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

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.

In Spite Of Everything, I Shall Rise Again

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

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.

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.

Well, I Dare Not Allow Myself Any Illusions, And I Am Afraid It May Never Happen That Father And Mother Will Really Appreciate My Art. It Is Not Their Fault; We Do Not See The Same Things With The Same Eyes, Or Have The Same Thoughts Raised In Us By Them. They Will Never Be Able To Understand What Painting Is.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Sometimes Think There Is Nothing So Delightful As Drawing.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!'

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.

Nature Always Begins By Resisting The Artist, But He Who Really Takes It Seriously Does Not Allow That Resistance To Put Him Off His Stride; On The Contrary, It Is That Much More Of A Stimulus To Fight For Victory.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

To Know Life, One Must Love Many Things.

Often Whole Days Pass Without My Speaking To Anyone.

Keep Your Love Of Nature, For That Is The True Way To Understand Art More And More.

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.

I Would Like To Leave This World And Never Return. I Severed My Ear, But How I Wish That I Had Severed My Heart. I Shall Never Amount To Anything.

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

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.

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 Will Not Live Without Love.

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

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.

Van Gogh Was So Under Appreciated In His Time, He Sold Only One Of His 900 Paintings While Alive. Posthumously, He Became One Of The Most Famous Artists Of All Time And His Work Is Now Considered Priceless. Oh The Irony.

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

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

Someday Death Will Take Us To Another Star.

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

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.

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.

We Are Surrounded By Poetry On All Sides.

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.

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

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

Exaggerate The Essential, Leave The Obvious Vague.

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

I Myself Believe That There Is In Every Painter's Life A Period Of Making Absurdities. In My Case I Think That Period Is Already Long Past.

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.

But What's Your Ultimate Goal, You'll Say. That Goal Will Become Clearer, Will Take Shape Slowly And Surely, As The Croquis Becomes A Sketch And The Sketch A Painting, As One Works More Seriously, As One Digs Deeper Into The Originally Vague Idea, The First Fugitive, Passing Thought, Unless It Becomes Firm.

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

...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?

Doing Little Things Well Is A Step Toward Doing Big Things Better.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

What Would Life Be If We Had No Courage To Attempt Anything?

The Uglier, Older, Meaner, Iller, Poorer I Get, The More I Wish To Take My Revenge By Doing Brilliant Color, Well Arranged, Resplendent.

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.

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 .

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.

I Try More And More To Be Myself, Caring Relatively Little Whether People Approve Or Disapprove.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You Have First To Experience What You Want To Express.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Lost My Job As An Art Salesman. It Was The Customer's Fault. He Wanted To Buy The Wrong Paintings.

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

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.

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

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

Both She And I Have Grief Enough And Trouble Enough, But As For Regrets – Neither Of Us Have Any.

If You Study Japanese Art You See A Man Who Is Undoubtedly Wise, Philosophic And Intelligent, Who Spends His Time How? In Studying The Distance Between The Earth And The Moon? No. In Studying The Policy Of Bismarck? No. He Studies A Single Blade Of Grass. But This Blade Of Grass Leads Him To Draw Every Plant And Then The Seasons, The Wide Aspects Of The Countryside, Then Animals, Then The Human Figure. So He Passes His Life, And Life Is Too Short To Do The Whole.

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.

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

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

Accurate Drawing, Accurate Colour, Is Perhaps Not The Essential Thing To Aim At, Because The Reflection Of Reality In A Mirror, If It Could Be Caught, Colour And All, Would Not Be A Picture At All, No More Than A Photograph.

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

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.

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

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.

It Is A Sad And Very Melancholy Scene, Which Must Strike Everyone Who Knows And Feels That We Also Have To Pass One Day Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death, And “que La Fin De La Vie Humaine, Ce Sont Des Larmes Ou Des Cheveux Blancs.” What Lies Beyond This Is A Great Mystery That Only God Knows, But He Has Revealed Absolutely Through His Word That There Is A Resurrection Of The Dead.

Shadow Of Death

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.

I Have Played Hell Somewhat With The Truthfulness Of The Colours.

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

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

Painting Is A Faith And That It Brings With It The Duty To Pay No Heed To Public Opinion - And That In It One Conquers By Perseverance And Not By Giving In.

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.

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.

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.

Purity Of Soul And Impurity Of Body Can Go Together.

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

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.

Art Is But Imitation Of Nature.

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.

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

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