Lust for Life Quotes

“It's so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“How difficult it is to be simple.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life!”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Normal people do not create art.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“There's no love without pain.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“On croit que j'imagine — ce n'est pas vrai — je me souviens.

[They say I imagine — it is not true — I remember.]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“You cannot be firmly certain about anything. You can only have enough courage and strength to do what you consider to be right. Maybe it turns out that was wrong, but still you would have done his, and it is most important.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre, ça c‘est la seule chose pratique, c‘est la grande science, la leçon à apprendre, la solution du problème de la vie.

[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life.]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“You cannot be the good all the time — sometimes it is necessary to get angry.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Loneliness is a kind of prison.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Life's not so bad after all. There are not only poison but also antidotes.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“After all, the world is still great.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“[...] And suddenly Vincent clearly realised what his subconsciousness had known for a long time. All the talks about God are just childish elusion, just a lie that calms a scared and lonely ordinary mortal in a dark and neverending night. There is no God. Sure as fate - there is no God. There is only chaos - dismal, painful, cruel, agonizing, blind, endless chaos.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“A person may paint or talk about painting but he cannot do both at the same time.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Everyone has their own personality, its own character, and if he respects that, everything would finally fall over for good only.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Artists thrive on suffering.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“I will be an artist. I am sure I will.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life….”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Who loves — lives, who lives - works, and who works has some bread.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Our secret thoughts - do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don't we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we?”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“The one who has not seen Paris in the morning does not know how beautiful it is.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“A man who has not suffered has nothing to tell with his paintings.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life