Top 100 Gogh's Quotes
#1. Now people look at 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a Picasso and see its new content: money. Auction houses inherently equate capital with value.
Jerry Saltz
#2. Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh's starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven's Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine.
Daniel Bor
#4. Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.
Roy Blount Jr.
#5. If cupcakes were art; Kate's would be Van Gogh's
C.T. Mitchell
#6. It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.
Robert Hughes
#7. A chord that becomes a melodious delusion,
In polar discrepancy from blue to yellow painted,
In yellow I existed, with digoxin's deadly illusion,
Like Van Gogh's stars in a bright night untainted.
Selina A. Mahmood
#9. I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.
Billy Childish
#10. It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after Van Gogh's stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.
Antonin Artaud
#11. Wherever at least two art lovers meet, Vincent Van Gogh's name is holy.
Irving Stone
#12. I slept in van Gogh's bed. I worked in the room where he painted. I saw the place where he was cared for when he cut off his ear. I lived in the jail cell where he stayed. And I looked out the window. You remember that picture of the cornfields through the bars? That was what I saw.
Irving Stone
#13. Some of the world's most talented people are introverts. Without them we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh's sunflowers.
Susan Cain
#14. Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.
Vincent Van Gogh
#15. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. - Vincent Van Gogh
Laurie A. Helgoe
#16. If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm
but that's a lie ... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
Vincent Van Gogh
#17. I feel that there's nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.
Vincent Van Gogh
#18. If you end up falling in love with someone, it's because of them. If you end up hating someone, it's because of you.
Vincent Van Gogh
#19. Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.
Vincent Van Gogh
#20. For a few minutes I stood alone in her chambers, appreciating the light and silence and art. There was a van Gogh on one of the walls, worth more than most planets could pay. It was a painting of the artist's room at Arles. Madness is not a new invention.
Dan Simmons
#21. 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
#22. Art and resistance are great together. That's what art's made for. Look at Vincent van Gogh: He didn't cut off his ear because he was selling well.
Albert Brooks
#23. If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one's love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger.
Vincent Van Gogh
#24. For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can't really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that's to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can't get on with the work.
Vincent Van Gogh
#25. It's so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.
[Vincent Van Gogh]
Irving Stone
#26. Autism's a very big spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, Einstein would probably be labeled autistic, Steve Jobs, half of Silicon Valley, you know, Van Gogh. And at the other end of the spectrum, you got much more severe handicaps where they never learn to speak.
Temple Grandin
#27. I myself believe that there is in every painter's life a period of making absurdities. In my case I think that period is already long past.
Vincent Van Gogh
#28. I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.
Mick Farren
#29. It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough 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
#31. We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pile of manure in the yard he destroyed his life. We care that Scott Joplin's music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own.
Alice Walker
#32. It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.
Vincent Van Gogh
#33. It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.
Vincent Van Gogh
#34. 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
#35. If I could have any artist's work on my sitting room wall it would probably be by Van Gogh or Picasso.
Juliet Stevenson
#36. Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.
Vincent Van Gogh
#37. Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!
Vincent Van Gogh
#38. We have very beautiful bad weather here at present - rain, wind, thunder - but with splendid effects; that's why I like it.
Vincent Van Gogh
#39. It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation - of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things - the thought of God comes into one's mind.
Vincent Van Gogh
#40. But on the road that I'm on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don't study, if I don't keep on trying, then I'm lost, then woe betide me. That's how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that's what's needed.
Vincent Van Gogh
#41. It's not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.
Vincent Van Gogh
#42. To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it, that's what I think duty is ... let us perservere as far as we can rather today than tomorrow.
Vincent Van Gogh
#43. Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.
Vincent Van Gogh
#44. It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.
Vincent Van Gogh
#45. What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity or an eccentric and disagreeable man ... I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
Vincent Van Gogh
#46. What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.
'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.
Natasha Pulley
#47. They say that art comes from the soul. The more drama in an artist's life, the more he can draw on for his art. Van Gogh and Picasso had troubled souls, but poor Steve Kaufman has been shot once, stabbed 3 times - all by women. That is a lot of drama for great art.
Robin Leach
#48. Your work may be great and not make its way into the big picture ... like Van Gogh ... so who's to say what's good and bad?
Frank Gehry
#49. Future generations will probably be able to enlighten us on this very interesting subject, and then science itself - with all due respect - may reach conclusions that are more or less in keeping with Christ's sayings about the other half of our life.
Vincent Van Gogh
#50. Study, analyse the social structure - that's always far more effective than moralising.
Vincent Van Gogh
#51. I'm now painting with all the elan of a Marseillais eating soup, which won't surprise you when I tell you I'm painting large sunflowers. The idea? To decorate the studio, now there's hope of Gauguin living here. I aim at a dozen panels of sunflowers in the room I've set aside for Gauguin ...
Vincent Van Gogh
#52. You will say that everyone has seen landscapes and figures from childhood on. The question is: Has everybody also been reflexive as a child? Has everybody who has seen them also loved heath, fields, meadows, woods, and the snow and the rain and the s.
Vincent Van Gogh
#53. Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
Vincent Van Gogh
#54. Love always causes trouble, that's true, but in its favour, it energizes.
Vincent Van Gogh
#55. I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends.
Vincent Van Gogh
#56. Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.
Vincent Van Gogh
#57. In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.
Vincent Van Gogh
#59. 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
#60. One must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning.
Vincent Van Gogh
#61. Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.
Charles Bukowski
#62. Learn to trust yourself. That's very vital ... Just stand with yourself. Remember, in his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only two paintings. I personally sold even fewer.
Eric Idle
#63. It would be horrible if there was no competition. It's what people want to see - they either like you or they don't. Not everybody likes Van Gogh. Or Bob Dylan! So you have Neil Young ... or Ozzy Osbourne.
Kate Hudson
#64. In general, you have great artists who have died far too early and who have left great cultural impact. If you look at people like Vincent van Gogh or Jean-Michel Basquiat-there's a long, long list of artists who have died in tragic circumstances, and far, far too early.
Simon De Pury
#65. I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.
Vincent Van Gogh
#66. I feel close to Marvin Gaye, Vincent van Gogh, because nobody appreciated his work until he was dead. Now it's worth millions.
Tupac Shakur
#67. It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
Vincent Van Gogh
#68. Love makes one calmer about things, and that way, one is fit for one's work.
Vincent Van Gogh
#69. There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that ... the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.
John Berger
#70. One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.
Vincent Van Gogh
#71. It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.
Vincent Van Gogh
#72. I consciously choose the dog's path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter ...
Vincent Van Gogh
#73. I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.
Vincent Van Gogh
#74. 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
#75. The only thing to do is to go one's own way, to try one's best, to make the thing live.
Vincent Van Gogh
#76. One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.
Vincent Van Gogh
#77. I assure you that there's a lot involved in compositions with figures ... It's like weaving ... you must control and keep an eye on several things at once.
Vincent Van Gogh
#78. Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.
Vincent Van Gogh
#79. No wonder Van Gogh cut his ear off, I thought; there's nothing else to do in a place like this but cut your ear off.
Philip Kerr
#80. I believe it is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love.
Vincent Van Gogh
#81. 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
#82. It's only a few nutcases who do art for themselves, like Van Gogh.
David Bailey
#83. I can't cut off an ear everyday. Do the Van Gogh here and the Mozart there. Anyway it's exhausting enough always having to check up on what one is really doing!.
Martin Kippenberger
#84. If you think beauty insipid, you haven't experienced it. Nor is it always devoid of suffering. That's something religious artists have always understood, Michelangelo, Chagall, and Van Gogh, Beethoven, C.S. Lewis, and all the writer's for whom beauty is a gift and a calling.
Kristen Heitzmann
#85. Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.
Vincent Van Gogh
#86. Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing as fine for putting an atmosphere round things. Carmine is the red of wine and is warm and lively like wine. The same goes for emerald green too. It's false economy to dispense with them, with those colors. Cadmium as well.
Vincent Van Gogh
#88. Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.
Vincent Van Gogh
#89. Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It's the same with me and writing.
Wayne Dyer
#90. It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.
Vincent Van Gogh
#91. This is the second Old Master I have encountered that has the signatures of another artist forged over it. A painting that has been created by another artist entirely. It's like they played mix and match.
Dayna S. Rubin
#92. Art, although produced by man's hands, is something not created by hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source out of our soul ... My sympathies in the literary as well as in the artistic field are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see most the working of the soul.
Vincent Van Gogh
#93. We must not judge God from this world. It's just a study that didn't come off. It's only a master who could make such a blunder.
Vincent Van Gogh
#94. The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.
Vincent Van Gogh
#95. And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.
David Hockney
#96. It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh ... Robert Schumann has been mentioned ... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath ... some of them with rather grim ends.
Stephen Fry
#97. 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
#98. But by fighting the difficulties in which one finds oneself, an inner strength develops from within our heart, which improves in life's fight.
Vincent Van Gogh
#99. If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people's opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.
Vincent Van Gogh
#100. I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don't invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It's a question of picking out what one wants from nature.
Vincent Van Gogh
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