Vincent Van Gogh

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.

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.

We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: “He is the one.” But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.

Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.

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 more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.

Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.

Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.

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.

It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation—of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things—the thought of God comes into one's mind.

The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.

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.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.

If one truly loves nature one finds beauty everywhere.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

But for one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.