677 Quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one’s own palette alone, and then nature is the result.

Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That’s just what artists lack!

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.

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.

That this awareness of my own fallibility will prevent me from making many mistakes doesn’t alter the fact that I’m bound to make a great many mistakes anyway. But if we fall, we get up again!

It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.

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

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.’

I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we didn’t dare to take things in hand?