677 Quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

It’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.

The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings – not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling.

Don’t regret that your life is too easy, mine is rather easy too; I think that life is pretty long and that the time will arrive soon enough in which “another shall gird thee and carry thee where thou wouldst not.

You may know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.

You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, ‘You can’t do a thing’.

If I should later come to see that I did wrong, well, then I shall of course be sorry, but as it is I have been unable to see how else I could possibly have acted. When somebody tells me decisively, ‘Get out of my house, the sooner the better, in half an hour rather than an hour,’ well then, my dear fellow, it doesn’t take a quarter of an hour for me to leave, never to return either.

Well, being sorry and giving up doesn’t help us on; the only thing to do is to push forward.

What am I in the eyes of most people –a nonentity or an eccentric or an obnoxious person –someone who has no position in society and never will have, in short the lowest of the low. Well, then –even if that were all absolutely true, I should one day like to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.

Painting a picture is as difficult as finding a large or a small diamond. Now, however, whereas everybody recognizes the value of a louis d’or or a pure pearl, those who cherish pictures and believe in them are unfortunately rare. But they exist nonetheless.