Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.
Vincent Van Gogh

I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.
Vincent Van Gogh

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'
Vincent Van Gogh


I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.
Vincent Van Gogh

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
Vincent Van Gogh

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.
Vincent Van Gogh


I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that. But have I set my heart on my work being a success? A thousand times no. I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work.
Vincent Van Gogh


I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.
Vincent Van Gogh

I certainly hope to sell in the course of time, but I think I shall be able to influence it most effectively by working steadily on, and that at the present moment making desperate efforts to force the work I am doing now upon the public would be pretty useless.
Vincent Van Gogh

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.
Vincent Van Gogh

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Vincent Van Gogh


If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies; if the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.
Vincent Van Gogh

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.
Vincent Van Gogh

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


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