677 Quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”.

Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.

All the same, I’m sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one’s will and love of self. But that’s no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life – artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don’t think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.

It is not only by one’s impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.

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.

The simple minded know many things that the wise ignore.

Every man must bear his own burden.

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

Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet – the marrying of form and colour.