Vincent van Gogh was the renowned Dutch post-Impressionist painter. He was born into an upper-middle-class family on March 30, 1853.
He was impoverished and unrecognized during his lifetime however he has left an indelible mark on the world of art.
He started his adult life as an art dealer that led him to become a teacher and then a missionary.
It was in Belgium that he painted his first major work, ‘The Potato Eaters’.
His move to Paris in 1886 led him to discover French Impressionism and meet eminent artists like Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin.
His palette blossomed into vibrant colors under the strong sunlight of southern France.
Related: Gustav Klimt Quotes from the Austrian Painter and Claude Monet Quotes from Famous French Painter
However, his relationship with Gauguin precipitated his first serious bout of mental health problems.
Van Gogh’s life was marked by alternating periods of depression and intense artistic activity, leading to a significant body of work.
His tumultuous life ended with his suicide in July 1890. His deep bond with his younger brother Theo, documented through hundreds of letters, provides invaluable insights into his thoughts and beliefs, shaping our understanding of this legendary artist.
Below you will find the popular Vincent van Gogh quotes.
Top 10 Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
1. “Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
2. “What is done in love is done well.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
3. “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
4. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
5. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
6. “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
7. “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
8. “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
9. “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
10. “I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Great Van Gogh Quotes
11. “Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
12. “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
13. “Art is to console those who are broken by life.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
14. “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
15. “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
16. “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
17. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
18. “In spite of everything, I shall rise again.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
19. “The sadness will last forever.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
20. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Popular Vincent van Gogh Quotes
21. “I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
22. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
23. “I will not live without love.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
24. “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
25. “I’ll start with small things.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
26. “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).
27. “I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
28. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
29. “There is peace even in the storm.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
30. “Doing little things well is a step toward doing big things better.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
31. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
32. “But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
33. “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).
34. “As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
35. “Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
36. “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).
37. “Conscience is a man’s compass.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
38. “The more you love, the more you suffer.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
39. “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
40. “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
41. “Someday death will take us to another star.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
42. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Famous Vincent van Gogh Quotes
43. “The sight of stars makes me dream.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
44. “Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
45. “Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
46. “Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
47. “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).
48. “Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
49. “I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
50. “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).
51. “The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
52. “We take death to reach a star.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
53. “There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
54. “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).
55. “Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
56. “Art demands constant observation.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
57. “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
58. “I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
59. “The sunflower is mine, in a way.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
60. “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).
61. “Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
62. “I have walked the earth for thirty years and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
63. “I wish they would take me as I am.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
64. “Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
65. “Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t.’” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Short Vincent van Gogh Quotes
66. “Art is but imitation of nature.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
67. “One can never study nature too much and too hard.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
68. “Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
69. “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
70. “For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
71. “We spent our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
72. “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).
73. “I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, 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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
74. “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
75. “To paint nature you must be in it a long time.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
76. “The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
77. “No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
78. “To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
79. “Sometimes I long so much to do landscape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh oneself, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
80. “It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
81. “You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
82. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
83. “Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
84. “If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
85. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Best Vincent van Gogh Quotes
86. “But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
87. “Painting demands an intelligent model.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
88. “The great artist is the simplifier.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
89. “I am astonished at the high prices paid for works by painters who are dead, prices none of them could expect when they were alive. It is a kind of tulip trade, in which living painters suffer but do not profit.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
90. “Christ is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
91. “Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
92. “One of the hardest things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
93. “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
94. “I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
95. “Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
96. “I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
97. “One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
98. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
99. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
100. “The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
101. “To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
102. “We are having wind and rain here, and I am very glad not to be alone. I work from memory on bad days, and that would not do if I were alone.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
103. “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).
104. “Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
105. “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.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
Inspiring Vincent van Gogh Quotes
106. “You can’t be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
107. “Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
108. “I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
109. “Since visiting the abattoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
110. “Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground – yet that ground is very dark…” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
111. “I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
112. “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).
113. “Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
114. “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).
115. “How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
116. “In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
117. “The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
118. “The painter of the future will be a colorist unlike anything yet.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
119. “The large majority of people are asleep and do not wish to wake up.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
120. “There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
121. “One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.” ~ (Vincent van Gogh).
