The Best Van Gogh quotes

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. — Vincent Van Gogh

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. — Vincent Van Gogh

Love is something eternal. — Vincent Van Gogh

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere. — Vincent Van Gogh

Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. — Vincent Van Gogh

I will not live without love. — Vincent Van Gogh

The more you love, the more you suffer. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

The way to know life is to love many things. — Vincent Van Gogh

Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see. — Vincent Van Gogh

If one truly loves nature one finds beauty everywhere. — Vincent Van Gogh

But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I believe it is one’s duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love. — Vincent Van Gogh

Love always causes trouble, that’s true, but in its favor, it energizes. — Vincent Van Gogh

I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made.. — Vincent Van Gogh

There is nothing more beautiful than nature early in the morning. — Vincent Van Gogh

And then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough? — Vincent Van Gogh

It is the language of nature to which one has to listen. — Vincent Van Gogh

Art is but imitation of nature. — Vincent Van Gogh

Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes. — Vincent Van Gogh

Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature. — Vincent Van Gogh

Life is not long for anybody, and the problem is only to make something of it. — Vincent Van Gogh

In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing. — Vincent Van Gogh

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? — Vincent Van Gogh

It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

If you don’t have a dog––at least one––there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life. — Vincent Van Gogh

I consciously choose the dog’s path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter. — Vincent Van Gogh

To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong. — Vincent Van Gogh

To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life. — Vincent Van Gogh

I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? — Vincent Van Gogh

You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream. — Vincent Van Gogh

Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it. — Vincent Van Gogh

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting. — Vincent Van Gogh

And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them. — Vincent Van Gogh

As a suffering creature, I cannot do without something greater than I–something that is my life–the power to create. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life. — Vincent Van Gogh

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn’t easy to paint oneself either. — Vincent Van Gogh

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. — Vincent Van Gogh

To paint nature you must be in it a long time. — Vincent Van Gogh

In a sense I’m glad that I’ve never learned how to paint. — Vincent Van Gogh

When I have a terrible need of–shall I say the word–religion, then I go out and paint the stars. — Vincent Van Gogh

One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it. — Vincent Van Gogh

My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself. — Vincent Van Gogh

If your inner voice is telling you that you can’t paint, by all means, hurry up and paint and silence the voice. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see. — Vincent Van Gogh

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self–portrait in writing. — Vincent Van Gogh

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. — Vincent Van Gogh

I am painting with the same enthusiasm as a Marseillaise eats bouillabaisse … I am painting big sunflowers. — Vincent Van Gogh

I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals. — Vincent Van Gogh

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion. — Vincent Van Gogh

I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer’s fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings. — Vincent Van Gogh

There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing–on the contrary, isn’t it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it? — Vincent Van Gogh

There is something intimate about painting I cannot explain to you ? but it is so delightful just for expressing one’s feelings. — Vincent Van Gogh

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground–yet that ground is very dark. — Vincent Van Gogh

I’ve just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers. — Vincent Van Gogh

It seems to me it’s a painter’s duty to try to put an idea into his work. — Vincent Van Gogh

One must work and dare if one really wants to live. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

I work even in the middle of the day, in the full sunshine, and I enjoy it like a cicada. — Vincent Van Gogh

Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance…I’m going like a painting–locomotive. — Vincent Van Gogh

In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself. — Vincent Van Gogh

There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly. — Vincent Van Gogh

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields. — Vincent Van Gogh

Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? […] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need. — Vincent Van Gogh

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech. — Vincent Van Gogh

The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

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. — Vincent Van Gogh

But for one’s health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing. — Vincent Van Gogh

And love makes one calmer about many things, and in that way, one is more fit for one’s work. — Vincent Van Gogh

Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people. — Vincent Van Gogh

I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply. — Vincent Van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. — Vincent Van Gogh

Purity of soul and impurity of body can go together. — Vincent Van Gogh

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul. — Vincent Van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers–by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way. — Vincent Van Gogh

I haven’t got it yet, but I’m hunting it and fighting for it, I want something serious, something fresh–something with soul in it! Onward, onward. — Vincent Van Gogh

One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning. — Vincent Van Gogh

Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come. — Vincent Van Gogh

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers–by see only a wisp of smoke. — Vincent Van Gogh

To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of stereoscopic realism, but is it not something that actually exists? — Vincent Van Gogh