Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

I must tell you that even while working I think continually about the plan of setting up a studio in which you and I will be permanent residents, but which both of us want to turn into a shelter and refuge for friends, against the times when they find that the struggle is getting too much for them.

If you hear a voice within you say ,you cannot paint,' then by all means paint. And that voice will be silenced.

Fortunately for me, I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable.

O never think the dead are dead, So long as there are men alive, The dead will live, the dead will live." That's how I feel it. Nothing sadder than that.

You have changed since then, you are no longer the same." Well, that is not entirely true. What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.

So now, when anyone says that such and such is done too quickly, you can reply that they have looked at it too quickly.

Is the Bible enough for us? These days I think Jesus himself would say again to those who sit down in melancholy, "It is not here, it is risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead?

People who do nothing but fall in love are perhaps more serious and saintly than those who sacrifice their love and their hearts to an idea.

When God supports us, illness is no misfortune, especially when we get new ideas and new intentions in those days of illness that would not have come to us if what not been ill, and when we achieve clearer faith and stronger trust in God.

Did I tell you that I had sent the drawings to friend Russell? At the moment I am doing practically the same ones again for you, there will be twelve likewise. You will then see better what there is in the painted studies in the way of drawing. I have already told you that I always have to fight against the mistral, which makes it absolutely impossible to be master of your stroke. That accounts for the "haggard" look of the studies.

I am writing to Russell at the same time. I think we know, don't we, that the English, the Yankees, have this much in common with the Dutch, that their charity…is very Christian. Now, the rest of us not being very good Christians…That's what I can't put out of my head writing again like this.

If I were living near you, I should try to make you understand that it might perhaps be more practical for you to paint with me than to write, and that you might be able to express your feelings more easily that way. In any case I can do something personally about your painting, but I am not in the writing profession.