Vincent Van Gogh

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.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

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

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

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

Love is eternal, the aspect may change, but not the essence.

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

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.

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

There is nothing more beautiful than nature early in the morning.

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.

Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

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.

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.

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.

The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.

No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves.