Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
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!
I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.
But by fighting the difficulties in which one finds oneself, an inner strength develops from within our heart, which improves in life's fight.
Suffice it to say that black and white are also colors... for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance.
I want to do drawings which touch some people... In either figure or landscape I wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow.
I would like to leave this world and never return. I severed my ear, but how I wish that I had severed my heart. I shall never amount to anything.
I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
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.
It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art.
I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.
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.
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.
I assure you that there's a lot involved in compositions with figures. ... It's like weaving... you must control and keep an eye on several things at once.
Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion - and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.
Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
If I did not succeed I still thought that what I had worked on would be continued. Not immediately. But there are others who believe in things that are true.
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.
I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.
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 done well.
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.
I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening...like a light in the midst of the darkness.
There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly.
If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass.
Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.
Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.
I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.
The more ugly, older, more cantankerous, more ill and poorer I become, the more I try to make amends by making my colours more vibrant, more balanced and beaming.
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.
Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.
In the fullness of artistic life there is, and remains, and will always come back at times, that homesick longing for the truly ideal life that can never come true.
To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong.
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.
I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.
Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!
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.
In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart
The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
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.'
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.
One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.
Occasionally, in times of worry, I've longed to be stylish, but on second thought I say no-just let me be myself-and express rough, yet true things with rough workmanship.
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.
I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.
One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death be like autumn leaves. Rabindranath Tagore What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.
It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.
What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity or an eccentric and disagreeable man... I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it, that's what I think duty is. ...let us perservere as far as we can rather today than tomorrow.