677 Quotes by 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.

One can never study nature too much and too hard.

That thought, I can’t find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man’s soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion.

I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don’t invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It’s a question of picking out what one wants from nature.

A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved.

I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I’ll recover from it, I’ll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I’ll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me.

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

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words.

How difficult it is to be simple!