Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

Love always causes trouble, that's true, but in its favour, it energizes

You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'.

I have had no "guidance or teaching" from others to speak of, but taught myself; no wonder my technique, considered superficially, differs from that of others. But that's no reason for my work to remain unsaleable. I feel pretty sure that the large "Sorrow," "The Old Woman of the Geest," the "Old Man," and others, will find a purchaser someday.

One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.

Housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the following plate was completed in 1886, portraying the unusual subject of a skeleton smoking a cigarette. The work has roused many interpretations, including a depiction of mortality and a prophetic cry of the dangers of tobacco. In the next two years, van Gogh painted two other paintings with skulls, illustrating his fascination with the macabre subject.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

Whenever we meet disappointment and sickness and trouble, my boy, let us thank Him for having brought us this hour, and let us not forget meekness, for it is written: 'On this man will I look, even on him who is poor and sorrowful and who trembleth at My word.

I'm getting on well here, I've got a lovely home & I'm finding it very pleasurable taking a look at London & the English way of life & the English people themselves, & then I've got nature & art & poetry, & if that isn't enough, what is?

One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad; it was- beautiful. The deep blue sky was flicked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. On the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, rose, brighter, flashing more like jewels than they do even in Paris. The sea was a very deep ultramarine.

Every man must bear his own burden.

Sorrow is better than joy - and even in mirth the heart is sad - and it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasts, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. Our nature is sorrowful but for those who have learnt and are learning to look at Jesus Christ, there is always reason to rejoice

For one's own work, thoughts and observation are not enough, we need the comfort and blessing and guidance of a higher power, and that is something anyone who is at all serious and who longs to lift up his soul to the light is sure to recognize and experience. Pining for God works like leaven on dough.