Liesbeth Heenk > Liesbeth's Quotes

“Van Gogh on his brother's upcoming marriage: "It’s because he’s in Holland, where he’s getting married one of these days. Now, while not denying the advantages of a marriage in the very least, once it has been done and one is quietly set up in one’s home, the funereal pomp of the reception &c., the lamentable congratulations of two families (even civilized) at the same time, not to mention the fortuitous appearances in those pharmacist’s jars where antediluvian civil or religious magistrates sit – my word – isn’t there good reason to pity the poor unfortunate obliged to present himself armed with the requisite papers in the places where, with a ferocity unequalled by the cruellest cannibals, you’re married alive on the low heat of the aforementioned funereal receptions.”
― Liesbeth Heenk, The 1-Hour Van Gogh Book

“The times when I’m happiest are when I’m ‘in flow’ with life. If I’m fully absorbed in assisting someone else, in showing them kindness, it seems as if ‘I’ disappear – and there’s nothing better than not thinking about myself for a while!”
― Julie Farrell

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

“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, Dear Theo

“I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..”
― Vincent van Gogh

“One day in the country
Is worth a month in town”
― Christina Rossetti

“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

“Dear brother,

I feel what Pa and Ma instinctively think about me (I don’t say reasonably).
There’s a similar reluctance about taking me into the house as there would be about having a large, shaggy dog in the house. He’ll come into the room with wet paws — and then, he’s so shaggy. He’ll get in everyone’s way. And he barks so loudly.
In short — it’s a dirty animal.
Very well — but the animal has a human history and, although it’s a dog, a human soul, and one with finer feelings at that, able to feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog can’t do.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them as they are.

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nuenen, 15 December 1883”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Van Gogh on Christmas:

And now we’re slowly heading towards winter, and many dread it, but Christmas is wonderful, it’s like the moss on the roofs and like the pine and the holly and the ivy in the snow.

Isleworth, 10 November 1876”
― Liesbeth Heenk, The 1-Hour Van Gogh Book: Complete Van Gogh Biography for Beginners

“How I wish we could spend a couple of Christmas days together, for instance — I would also dearly like to have you in my studio once more.

I, too, have been toiling quite hard recently, precisely because I was full of the Christmas feeling, and feeling isn’t enough, one must bring it into one’s work.

So I’m now occupied with two large heads of an orphan man, with his white beard and old-fashioned, old top hat.

This chap has the sort of old, lively face that one would wish for beside a cosy Christmas fire.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“It quite often makes me feel sad that painting’s like a bad mistress one might have, who’s always spending, spending and it’s never enough.. [Letter 630, Arles, 23 June 1888]”
― Vincent van Gogh

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
― Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“Dans chaque vie où de la pluie doit tomber, quelques jours seront sombres et lugubres – c'est vrai, il ne peut en aller autrement, et pourtant je me demande si le nombre de jours sombres et lugubres peut parfois devenir trop grand ? La lutte intérieure de Van Gogh: Sa vie, son œuvre et sa maladie mentale - Liesbeth Heenk”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing.”
― Madeleine de Scudéry

“Time is so long when there is suffering and so short when there is happiness.”
― Manny Steinberg, Outcry: Holocaust Memoirs