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The Letters of Vincent van Gogh QUOTES

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh QUOTES

1 " 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 , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

2 " There is peace even in the storm "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

3 " 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 , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

4 " Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

5 " To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

6 " 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 , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

7 " My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

8 " What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

9 " 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. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

10 " And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

11 " Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well.... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.

If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

12 " I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

13 " Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

14 " There are often beams in our eye that we know not of. Let us therefore ask that our eye may become single, for then we ourselves shall become wholly single. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

15 " So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one’s soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

16 " There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

17 " 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 , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

18 " I knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

19 " 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. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

20 " And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her—it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton—a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room. "

― Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh