It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.
Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
I dream my painting and I paint my dream.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.
I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
The sadness will last forever.
I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly'.
The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.
Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.
I wish they would take me as I am.
La tristesse durera toujours. [The sadness will last forever.]
The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.
There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.
There is peace even in the storm
I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.
To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life
I will not live without love.
Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
Someday death will take us to another star.
The sunflower is mine, in a way.
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
I'm such a nobody.
Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
In spite of everything, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.
So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.
Only when I fall do I get up again.
I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.
When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.
If you don’t have a dog--at least one--there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.
It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.
Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.
But for one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.
I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening...like a light in the midst of the darkness.
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.
Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough.
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.
One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
What is done in love is done well.
What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.
The best way to know life is to love many things
As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.
I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.
Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.
We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words
Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.
The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.
Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.
What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?
An artist needn't be a clergyman or a church warden, but he must have a warm heart for his fellow men
How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.
We are surrounded by poetry on all sides...
I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.
Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.
The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.
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.
It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
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
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.
How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.
The more you love, the more you suffer
That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.
The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.
It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work...and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.
I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.
If one loves nature one finds beauty everywhere.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
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.
There are two ways of reasoning about painting: how to do it and how not to do it; how to d it with great deal of drawing and not much colour, how not to do it with a great deal of colour and not much drawing.
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.
I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.
Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.
I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..
