The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

“How does one become mediocre? By complying with and conforming to one thing today and another tomorrow, as the world dictates, by never contradicting the world and by heeding public opinion”_Page.250”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“,,,can you tell what goes on within by looking at what happens without? There may be a great fire in your soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney and they walk on”_Page.70-71”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“Anyone who leads an upright life and experiences real difficulty and disappointment and yet is not crushed by them is worth more than one for whom everything has always been plain sailing and who has known nothing but relative prosperity”_Page.52”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more than the price of the paint and my living expenses, very meagre on the whole, which we put into them”_ Page.419”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“To compare human beings with grains of corn, now - in every human being who is healthy and natural there is a germinating force, just as there is in a grain of corn. And so natural life is germination. What the germinating force is to grain, love is to us.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“Art often seems very exalted and, as you say sacred. But the same can be said of love.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“I sometimes shudder when I think of [her], and see how she buries herself in the past and clings to old dead ideas. There is a kind of fatality in it.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“It is so beautiful here if one has only an open and simple eye with few beams in it. But if one has that it is beautiful everywhere.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things, of which I happen to repent, more or less, afterwards.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“I am often homesick for the land of pictures.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“L'opera di un artista e la sua vita privata sono come una puerpera e il suo bambino. Puoi guardare il bambino ma non puoi certo sollevare la veste della donna per guardare se è macchiata di sangue, sarebbe indelicato.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“Cerca di amare più cose che puoi, perché i più non ne amano abbastanza.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“Thank you for your letter, but I've had a poor time of it these days; my money ran out on Thursday and so it proved a hellishly long time between then and Monday noon. During these four days I have lived mainly of coffee 23 cups of it with bread which I still have to pay for.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“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

“you will see . . . Gauguin and Bernard talk now of ‘painting like children’ – I would rather have that than ‘painting like decadents’.”
― Elfreda Powell, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“Try to walk as much as you can and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her . . .”
― Elfreda Powell, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh