Discover the wisdom and beauty of Vincent Van Gogh‘s words with this handpicked collection of the best 94 quotes from the legendary artist. Immerse yourself in his thoughts and gain insights into his creative process, passion for art, and profound observations on life, love, and the human condition. From his famous quotes on painting to his introspective musings, this compilation captures the essence of Van Gogh’s genius.
Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
1- “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” -Vincent Van Gogh
2- “What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.” -Vincent Van Gogh
3- “What is done in love is done well.” -Vincent Van Gogh
4- “My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life… looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, ‘Oh, the pictures I might have made!’” -Vincent Van Gogh
5- “Go out and paint the stars.” -Vincent Van Gogh
6- “… life is too short to do the whole.” – Vincent Van Gogh
7- “How difficult it is to be simple.” -Vincent Van Gogh
8- “Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.” -Vincent Van Gogh
9- “Admire more. Most people don’t admire enough.” -Vincent Van Gogh
10- “I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colours.” -Vincent Van Gogh
11- “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
12- “Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.” -Vincent Van Gogh
13- “Conscience is a man’s compass.” -Vincent Van Gogh
14- “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?” -Vincent Van Gogh
15- “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.” -Vincent Van Gogh
16- “Great things do not just happen by impulse, but as a succession of small things linked together.” -Vincent Van Gogh
17- “A great fire burns within me but no one stops to warm themselves at it. And passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.” -Vincent Van Gogh
18- “The great artist is the simplifier.” -Vincent Van
19- “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” -Vincent Van Gogh
20- “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
21- “I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” -Vincent Van Gogh
22- “Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” -Vincent Van Gogh
23- “We all need fun, happiness, hope, and love.” -Vincent Van Gogh
24- “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
25- “I think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” -Vincent Van Gogh
26- “One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.” -Vincent Van Gogh
27- “Love always brings difficulties, that is true but the good side of it is that it gives energy.” -Vincent Van Gogh
28- “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
29- “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.” -Vincent Van Gogh
30- “As you can see, I am immersing myself in color-I’ve held back from that until now; and I don’t regret it.” -Vincent Van Gogh
31- “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
32- “I’ve just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting.” -Vincent Van Gogh
33- “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” -Vincent Van Gogh
34- “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
35- “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” -Vincent Van Gogh
36- “There is nothing more artistic than loving people.” -Vincent Van Gogh
37- “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.” -Vincent Van Gogh
38- “The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.” -Vincent Van Gogh
39- “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much.” -Vincent Van Gogh
40- “You have first to experience what you want to express.” -Vincent Van Gogh
41- “Normality is a paved road. It’s comfortable to walk but no flowers grow on it.” -Vincent Van Gogh
42- “What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.” -Vincent Van Gogh
43- “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” -Vincent Van Gogh
44- “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
45- “I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” -Vincent Van Gogh
46- “I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.” -Vincent Van Gogh
47- “Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.” -Vincent Van Gogh
48- “Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.” -Vincent Van Gogh
49- “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.” -Vincent Van Gogh
50- “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
51- “Painters have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.” -Vincent Van Gogh
52- “Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.” -Vincent Van Gogh
53- “The way to know God is to love many things.” -Vincent Van Gogh
54- “In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.” -Vincent Van Gogh
55- “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, its tides, and its depths; it has its pearls too.” -Vincent Van Gogh
56- “Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.” -Vincent Van Gogh
57- “Love is something eternal; the aspect may change but not the essence.” -Vincent Van Gogh
58- “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
59- “Everyone who works with love and intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.” -Vincent Van Gogh
60- “Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.” -Vincent Van Gogh
61- “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” -Vincent Van Gogh
62- “I never get tired of the blue sky.” -Vincent Van Gogh
63- “I wish they would only take me as I am.” -Vincent Van Gogh
64- “My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.” -Vincent Van Gogh
65- “The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else but keep heart, it will turn out alright.” -Vincent Van Gogh
66- “Art is to console those who are broken by life.” -Vincent Van Gogh
67- “Drawing is the root of everything.” -Vincent Van Gogh
68- “For my part, I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
69- “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
70- “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
71- “I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
72- “I will not live without love.” -Vincent Van Gogh
73- “I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me…a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.” -Vincent Van Gogh
74- “The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.” -Vincent Van Gogh
75- “Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.” -Vincent Van Gogh
76- “The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts.” -Vincent Van Gogh
77- “I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.” -Vincent Van Gogh
78- “It isn’t an easy job to paint oneself – at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see – this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph.” -Vincent Van Gogh
79- “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
80- “It interests me tremendously to make copies… I started it by chance and I find it teaches me things.” -Vincent Van Gogh
81- “I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
82- “I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.” -Vincent Van Gogh
83- “So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light.” -Vincent Van Gogh
84- “The sadness will last forever.” -Vincent Van Gogh
85- “Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.” -Vincent Van Gogh
86- “What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.” -Vincent Van Gogh
87- “My sketchbook is a witness of what I am experiencing, scribbling things whenever they happen.” -Vincent Van Gogh
88- “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.” -Vincent Van Gogh
89- “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
90- “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
91- “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.” -Vincent Van Gogh
92- “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
93- “In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.” -Vincent Van Gogh
94- “Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.” -Vincent Van Gogh