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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.

-Vincent Van Gogh

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Van Gogh Was So

Vincent Van Gogh

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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.

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It Must Be A Good Thing To Die Conscious Of Having Performed Some Real Good, And To Know That By This Work One Will Live, At Least In The Memory Of Some, And Will Have Left A Good Example To Those That Come After. A Work That Is Good-it May Not Be Eternal, But The Thought Expressed In It Is, And The Work Itself Will Certainly Remain In Existence For A Long, Long Time; And If Afterwards Others Arise, They Can Do No Better Than Follow In The Footsteps Of Such Predecessors And Do Their Work In The Same Way.

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

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.

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

To Express The Love Of Two Lovers By A Marriage Of Two Complementary Colors, Their Mingling And Their Opposition, The Mysterious Vibrations Of Kindred Tones. To Express The Thought Of A Brow By The Radiance Of Light Tone Against A Somber Background; To Express Hope By Some Star, The Eagerness Of A Soul By A Sunset Radiance.

I Always Think Photographs Abominable, And I Don't Like To Have Them Around, Particularly Not Those Of Persons I Know And Love. Those Photographic Portraits Wither Much Sooner Than We Ourselves Do, Whereas The Painted Portrait Is A Thing Which Is Felt, Done With Love.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A Good Picture Is Equivalent To A Good Deed.

In The End We Shall Have Had Enough Of Cynicism, Skepticism And Humbug, And We Shall Want To Live More Musically.

What Is Done In Love Is Done Well.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Heart Of Man Is Very Much Like The Sea, It Has Its Storms, It Has Its Tides And In Its Depths It Has Its Pearls Too

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.

The Only Thing To Do Is To Go One's Own Way, To Try One's Best, To Make The Thing Live.

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

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

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.

The Great Artist Is The Simplifier.

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.

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.

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.

One Must Learn To Read, Just As One Must Learn To See And Learn To Live.

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

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.

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

Painting Demands An Intelligent Model.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Selfless Service

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Love Is Something Eternal.

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'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 Is No More Easy To Make A Good Picture Than It Is To Find A Diamond Or A Pearl. It Means Trouble And You Risk Your Life For It.

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 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.

The Cypresses Are Always Occupying My Thoughts.

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

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

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

Even The Knowledge Of My Own Fallibility Cannot Keep Me From Making Mistakes. Only When I Fall Do I Get Up Again.

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

What Is True Is That I Have At Times Earned My Own Crust Of Bread, And At Other Times A Friend Has Given It To Me Out Of The Goodness Of His Heart. I Have Lived Whatever Way I Could, For Better Or For Worse, Taking Things Just As They Came.

I Use Color In A Completely Arbitrary Way In Order To Express Myself Powerfully.

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

Exaggerate The Essential, Leave The Obvious Vague.

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

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.

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

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.

In Spite Of Everything, I Shall Rise Again

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Always Dream A Painting Like That, With A Group Of Lively Figures Of The Pals.

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

I Am Not An Adventurer By Choice But By Fate.

Art Demands Constant Observation.

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

Color In A Picture Is Like Enthusiasm In Life.

Enthusiasm For Life

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.

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 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.

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 I Were To Think Of And Dwell On Disastrous Possibilities, I Could Do Nothing. I Throw Myself Headlong Into My Work, And Come Up Again With My Studies.

In Trees, I See Expression And Soul

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.

To Know Life, One Must Love Many Things.

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

Someday Death Will Take Us To Another Star.

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.

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.

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.

Try To Walk As Much As You Can, And Keep Your Love For Nature, For That Is The True Way To Learn To Understand Art More And More. Painters Understand Nature And Love Her And Teach Us To See Her. If One Really Loves Nature, One Can Find Beauty Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

My Opinion Is That The Best Thing Would Be To Work On Till Art Lovers Feel Drawn Toward It Of Their Own Accord, Instead Of Having To Praise Or To Explain It.

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.

Perhaps Someday Everyone Will Have Neurosis.

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

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

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

I Tried To Express Through Red And Green The Terrible Passions Of Humanity.

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

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

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.

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.

Normality Is A Paved Road: It’s Comfortable To Walk, But No Flowers Grow On It.

It Is Good To Love Many Things

Often Whole Days Pass Without My Speaking To Anyone.

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.

No Blue Without Yellow And Without Orange, And If You Do Blue, Then Do Yellow And Orange As Well, Surely.

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 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.

You Have First To Experience What You Want To Express.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

One Must Spoil As Many Canvases As One Succeeds With.

You Can't Be At The Pole And The Equator At The Same Time. You Must Choose Your Own Line, As I Hope To Do, And It Will Probably Be Color.

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

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

In Spite Of Everything I Shall Rise Again: I Will Take Up My Pencil, Which I Have Forsaken In My Great Discouragement, And I Will Go On With My Drawing.

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.

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

You Can Feel The Stars And The Infinity Of The Sky Since Life, In Spite Of Everything, Is Like A Dream.

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

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.

At Present I Absolutely Want To Paint A Starry Sky. It Often Seems To Me That Night Is Still More Richly Coloured Than The Day; Having Hues Of The Most Intense Violets, Blues And Greens. If Only You Pay Attention To It You Will See That Certain Stars Are Lemon-yellow, Others Pink Or A Green, Blue And Forget-me-not Brilliance. And Without My Expatiating On This Theme It Is Obvious That Putting Little White Dots On The Blue-black Is Not Enough To Paint A Starry Sky.

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.

I Dream Of Painting And Then I Paint My Dream.

How Lovely Yellow Is! It Stands For The Sun.

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

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.

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.

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

Flowers Growing

...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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Since Visiting The Abatoirs Of S. France I Have Stopped Eating Meat.

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

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.

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

I Began To Paint Again, Even Though I Could Barely Hold The Brush, But Knowing Exactly What I Wanted To Paint, I Began Three More Large Canvases... Of Large Wheat Fields Under Cloudy Skies, And It Did Not Take A Great Deal To Express Sadness And Loneliness... I Believe These Paintings Say What Words Cannot.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Lamps Are Burning And The Starry Sky Is Over It All.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Will Not Live Without Love.

The World Concerns Me Only In So Far As I Have A Certain Debt And Duty To It, Because I Have Lived In It For Thirty Years And Owe To It To Leave Behind Some Souvenir In The Shape Of Drawings And Paintings – Not Done To Please Any Particular Movement, But Within Which A Genuine Human Sentiment Is Expressed.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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