All Time Famous Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter known for his emotionally charged and innovative artworks. Despite a challenging life marked by mental health struggles, he produced over 2,000 pieces, including iconic works like “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night.” Van Gogh’s distinct style featured bold colors, broad brushstrokes, and intense emotion. His close relationship with his brother Theo supported him both emotionally and financially. Tragically, Van Gogh’s mental health deteriorated, and he died by suicide in 1890. Despite struggling during his lifetime, his posthumous recognition elevated him to the status of a master of modern art. His influence on subsequent generations of artists is profound, and his paintings are celebrated globally for their enduring impact on the art world.

Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

1. “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
— Vincent van Gogh

2. “Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
— Vincent van Gogh

3. “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

4. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
— Vincent van Gogh

5. “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
— Vincent van Gogh

6. “Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
— Vincent van Gogh

7. “I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.”
— Vincent van Gogh

8. “What is done in love is done well.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

10. “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
— Vincent van Gogh

11. “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
— Vincent van Gogh

12. “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”
— Vincent van Gogh

13. “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.”
— Vincent van Gogh

14. “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”
— Vincent van Gogh

15. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

16. “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
— Vincent van Gogh

17. “The sadness will last forever.”
— Vincent van Gogh

18. “It is good to 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 well done.”
— Vincent van Gogh

19. “In spite of everything, I shall rise again.”
— Vincent van Gogh

20. “I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.”
— Vincent van Gogh

21. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.”
— Vincent van Gogh

22. “Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you’re put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
— Vincent van Gogh

23. “I will not live without love.”
— Vincent van Gogh

24. “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.”
— Vincent van Gogh

25. “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.”
— Vincent van Gogh

26. “I’ll start with small things.”
— Vincent van Gogh

27. “There is peace even in the storm.”
— Vincent van Gogh

28. “Doing little things well is a step toward doing big things better.”
— Vincent van Gogh

29. “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.”
— Vincent van Gogh

30. “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
— Vincent van Gogh

31. “I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.”
— Vincent van Gogh

32. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

33. “But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.”
— Vincent van Gogh

34. “As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.”
— Vincent van Gogh

35. “Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”
— Vincent van Gogh

36. “The more you love, the more you suffer.”
— Vincent van Gogh

37. “To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace.”
— Vincent van Gogh

38. “Conscience is a man’s compass.”
— Vincent van Gogh

39. “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”.”
— Vincent van Gogh

40. “Someday death will take us to another star.”
— Vincent van Gogh

41. “Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.”
— Vincent van Gogh

42. “The sight of stars makes me dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

43. “In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”
— Vincent van Gogh

44. “Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.”
— Vincent van Gogh

45. “Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.”
— Vincent van Gogh

46. “Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.”
— Vincent van Gogh

47. “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

48. “The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.”
— Vincent van Gogh

49. “Art is but imitation of nature.”
— Vincent van Gogh

50. “There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
— Vincent van Gogh

51. “We take death to reach a star.”
— Vincent van Gogh

52. “Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.”
— Vincent van Gogh

53. “I wish they would take me as I am.”
— Vincent van Gogh

54. “For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”
— Vincent van Gogh

55. “Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.”
— Vincent van Gogh

56. “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.”
— Vincent van Gogh

57. “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

58. “The sunflower is mine, in a way.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

60. “Art demands constant observation.”
— Vincent van Gogh

61. “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.”
— Vincent van Gogh

62. “It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill – it’s a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I’m all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I’ll always remain half crazy.”
— Vincent van Gogh

63. “Don’t lose heart if it’s very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.”
— Vincent van Gogh

64. “I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better.”
— Vincent van Gogh

65. “Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.”
— Vincent van Gogh

66. “I have walked the earth for thirty years and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.”
— Vincent van Gogh

67. “Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

69. “Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.”
— Vincent van Gogh

70. “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.’”
— Vincent van Gogh

71. “I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.”
— Vincent van Gogh

72. “One can never study nature too much and too hard.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

74. “No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely.”
— Vincent van Gogh

75. “We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words.”
— Vincent van Gogh

76. “The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.”
— Vincent van Gogh

77. “To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.”
— Vincent van Gogh

78. “Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.”
— Vincent van Gogh

79. “To paint nature you must be in it a long time.”
— Vincent van Gogh

80. “Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.”
— Vincent van Gogh

81. “It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.”
— Vincent van Gogh

82. “To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life.”
— Vincent van Gogh

83. “Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

85. “It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”
— Vincent van Gogh

86. “One may have a blazing heart 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

87. “Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.”
— Vincent van Gogh

88. “One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.”
— Vincent van Gogh

89. “If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.”
— Vincent van Gogh

90. “The great artist is the simplifier.”
— Vincent van Gogh

91. “Christ is more of an artist than the artist; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.”
— Vincent van Gogh

92. “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.”
— Vincent van Gogh

93. “But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith .”
— Vincent van Gogh

94. “Painting demands an intelligent model.”
— Vincent van Gogh

95. “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

97. “I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.”
— Vincent van Gogh

98. “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

100. “How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.”
— Vincent van Gogh

101. “Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.”
— Vincent van Gogh

102. “When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

104. “You can’t be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color.”
— Vincent van Gogh

105. “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

106. “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

107. “How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”
— Vincent van Gogh

108. “For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can’t really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that’s to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can’t get on with the work.”
— Vincent van Gogh

109. “I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

110. “As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.”
— Vincent van Gogh

111. “Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes.”
— Vincent van Gogh

112. “Since visiting the abattoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.”
— Vincent van Gogh

113. “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

114. “The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.”
— Vincent van Gogh

115. “We have very beautiful bad weather here at present – rain, wind, thunder – but with splendid effects; that’s why I like it.”
— Vincent van Gogh

116. “In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.”
— Vincent van Gogh

117. “If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.”
— Vincent van Gogh

118. “Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.”
— Vincent van Gogh

119. “The laws of color are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.”
— Vincent van Gogh

120. “I thought I would be understood without words.”
— Vincent van Gogh

121. “How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?”
— Vincent van Gogh

122. “I never get tired of the blue sky.”
— Vincent van Gogh

123. “There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!”
— Vincent van Gogh

124. “I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterward.”
— Vincent van Gogh

125. “I would like to leave this world and never return. I severed my ear, but how I wish that I had severed my heart. I shall never amount to anything.”
— Vincent van Gogh

126. “For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy – that is what is hard to bear…”
— Vincent van Gogh

127. “But on the road that I’m on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don’t study, if I don’t keep on trying, then I’m lost, then woe betide me. That’s how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that’s what’s needed.”
— Vincent van Gogh

128. “What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.”
— Vincent van Gogh

129. “Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”
— Vincent van Gogh

130. “It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent.”
— Vincent van Gogh

131. “Love is something eternal.”
— Vincent van Gogh

132. “The only thing to do is to go one’s own way, to try one’s best, to make the thing live.”
— Vincent van Gogh

133. “Only when I fall do I get up again.”
— Vincent van Gogh

134. “As a painter, I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it.”
— Vincent van Gogh

135. “Perhaps someday everyone will have neurosis.”
— Vincent van Gogh

136. “I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

138. “There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple which complete each other like man and woman.”
— Vincent van Gogh

139. “You have first to experience what you want to express.”
— Vincent van Gogh

140. “I tried to express through red and green the terrible passions of humanity.”
— Vincent van Gogh

141. “How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.”
— Vincent van Gogh

142. “So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”
— Vincent van Gogh

143. “That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.”
— Vincent van Gogh

144. “The large majority of people are asleep and do not wish to wake up.”
— Vincent van Gogh

145. “I shouldn’t precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can’t very well get out of it.”
— Vincent van Gogh

146. “God sends us pieces of art so that we may see ourselves in them.”
— Vincent van Gogh

147. “The painter of the future will be a colorist unlike anything yet.”
— Vincent van Gogh

148. “To know life, one must love many things.”
— Vincent van Gogh

149. “Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make a distinction between good and evil.”
— Vincent van Gogh

150. “In trees, I see expression and soul.”
— Vincent van Gogh

151. “My sketchbook is a witness of what I am experiencing, scribbling things whenever they happen.”
— Vincent van Gogh

152. “I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.”
— Vincent van Gogh

153. “We must not judge God from this world. It’s just a study that didn’t come off. It’s only a master who could make such a blunder.”
— Vincent van Gogh

154. “People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don’t know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage.”
— Vincent van Gogh

155. “But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”
— Vincent van Gogh

156. “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”
— Vincent van Gogh

157. “The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.”
— Vincent van Gogh

158. “To die for the sake of dying – I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom!”
— Vincent van Gogh

159. “Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person.”
— Vincent van Gogh

160. “The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
— Vincent van Gogh

161. “Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.”
— Vincent van Gogh

162. “What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?”
— Vincent van Gogh

163. “So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

165. “It is the language of nature to which one has to listen.”
— Vincent van Gogh

166. “I want to paint humanity, humanity and again humanity.”
— Vincent van Gogh

167. “It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.”
— Vincent van Gogh

168. “At times it is not easy for me to take up living again.”
— Vincent van Gogh

169. “The earth from afar shines like a star.”
— Vincent van Gogh

170. “Love makes one calmer about things, and that way, one is fit for one’s work.”
— Vincent van Gogh

171. “It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn’t easy to paint oneself either.”
— Vincent van Gogh

172. “In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.”
— Vincent van Gogh

173. “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

174. “If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass.”
— Vincent van Gogh

175. “Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make an arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully.”
— Vincent van Gogh

176. “But one doesn’t expect out of life what one has already learned that it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.”
— Vincent van Gogh

177. “How difficult it is to be simple!”
— Vincent van Gogh

178. “The way to know life is to love many things.”
— Vincent van Gogh

179. “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.”
— Vincent van Gogh

180. “We are surrounded by poetry on all sides…”
— Vincent van Gogh

181. “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

182. “Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.”
— Vincent van Gogh

183. “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

184. “The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts.”
— Vincent van Gogh

185. “It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.”
— Vincent van Gogh

186. “I want to paint what I feel, and feel what I paint.”
— Vincent van Gogh

187. “There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even – the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good.”
— Vincent van Gogh

188. “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”
— Vincent van Gogh

189. “When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”
— Vincent van Gogh

190. “So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light.”
— Vincent van Gogh

191. “I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.”
— Vincent van Gogh

192. “How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won’t do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.”
— Vincent van Gogh

193. “I want to paint men and women with that something of the external which the halo used to symbolize, and which we now seek to give by the actual radiance and vibrancy of our colorings.”
— Vincent van Gogh

194. “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.”
— Vincent van Gogh

195. “Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.”
— Vincent van Gogh

196. “To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture.”
— Vincent van Gogh

197. “Art is something greater 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 a man’s soul.”
— Vincent van Gogh

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

199. “The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.”
— Vincent van Gogh

200. “Drawing is the root of everything.”
— Vincent van Gogh