Explore Quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

The best way to know God is to love many things.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

The way to know life is to love many things.

It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

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.

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

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.

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.

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.

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.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of 'you can't.'

Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.

Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.

The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.