Vincent Van Gogh

Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.

I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

A good picture is equivalent to 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.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

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 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.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

Yellow is capable of charming God.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

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.

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.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

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.

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.