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Vincent Van Gogh Quotes - Page 15

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When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more

When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

Vincent Van Gogh
Heart, Fighting, Order
Letter to Theo van Gogh, May 30, 1877.

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
Art, Moving, People

Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.

Vincent Van Gogh
Ploughing, Fields, Facts
Vincent van Gogh (1929). “Further Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1886-1889”

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

Vincent Van Gogh
Artist, Imagination, Taste

Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

Vincent Van Gogh
Canvas, Blank, Staring

For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy - that is what is hard to bear.

Vincent Van Gogh
Kindness, Loneliness, Worry
Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Vicent van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Editorial Biblos

It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and “que la fin de la vie humaine, ce sont des larmes ou des cheveux blancs.” What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead.

Vincent Van Gogh
Lying, Shadow Of Death, One Day
Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.

Vincent Van Gogh
Roots, Drawing, Profit

For myself, I declare I don't know anything about it. But the sight of the stars always makes me dream.

Vincent Van Gogh
Dream, Stars, Sight

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

Vincent Van Gogh
Writing, Self, Trying
Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2764, Delphi Classics

I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals.

Vincent Van Gogh
Dream, Groups, Pals

Painting demands an intelligent model.

Vincent Van Gogh
Intelligent, Demand, Painting

How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.

Vincent Van Gogh
Lying, Reality, Deceit

An artist need not be a minister or a collector in church, but he must have a warm heart for people, and I find it a noble thing that, for example, no winter passed without The Graphic doing something to keep alive sympathy for the poor.

Vincent Van Gogh
Heart, Winter, Artist

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

Vincent Van Gogh
Easy, Paint, Difficult

The majority of (painters), because they aren't colorists, do not see yellow, orange or sulphur in the South (of France) and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs

Vincent Van Gogh
Eye, Yellow, Orange

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Vincent Van Gogh
Art, Order, Color

Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet - the marrying of form and colour.

Vincent Van Gogh
Form, Masters, Colour

The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature.

Vincent Van Gogh
Dream, Perfection, Smoking
Vincent Van Gogh (2013). “Van Gogh on Art and Artists: Letters to Emile Bernard”, p.64, Courier Corporation

My great longing is to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes in reality, so that they may become, yes, lies if you like - but truer than the literal truth.

Vincent Van Gogh
Truth, Lying, Reality
Rosemary Treble, Vincent van Gogh (1975). “Van Gogh and his art”

It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.

Vincent Van Gogh
Memories, Real, Long
Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride; on the contrary, it is that much more of a stimulus to fight for victory.

Vincent Van Gogh
Fighting, Artist, Victory
Vincent van Gogh (1971). “Van Gogh's "diary"; the artist's life in his own words and art”

Life is not long for anybody, and the problem is only to make something of it.

Vincent Van Gogh
Long, Problem, Life Is
Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2388, Delphi Classics

Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!

Vincent Van Gogh
Art, Painting, Like You
Vincent van Gogh, Martin Bailey (1990). “Vicent van Gogh, letters from Provence”, Editorial Biblos

It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.

Vincent Van Gogh
Art, Painting, These Days
Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.1662, Delphi Classics

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