I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.

Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well…. Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by...

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

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.

It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things...

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...

There is safety in the very heart of danger.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

A life without love is a sinful and immoral thing.

To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, but a living one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving

There is peace even in the storm

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.

I dream my painting and then paint my dream.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

The way to know life is to love many things.

I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter...

What am I in the eyes of most people–a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person–somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right,...

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

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.

Conscience is a man’s compass

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.

Thank God, I have my work, but instead of earning money by it, I need money to be able to work; that is the difficulty. I think there are no signs in my work that...

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

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence

Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. 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...

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent.

I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.

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.

You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also: Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through.

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...

In my painting of the ‘All -Night Cafe’ I’ve tried to express the idea that the cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself, become crazy and criminal. Through the contrast of the delicate...

..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.

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

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

For me, the work is an absolute necessity. I cannot put it off; I don’t care for anything else; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once, and I become melancholy...

Look here, I often feel the same in more than one respect–not just in financial things, but in art itself, and in life in general. But do you think it’s anything exceptional? Don’t you think...

It is only right and proper to be moved by the Bible, but present-day reality has so strong a hold over us that even when we try to imagine the past the minor events in...

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

There are often beams in our eye that we know not of. Let us therefore ask that our eye may become single, for then we ourselves shall become wholly single.

I have … a terrible need … shall I say the word? … of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

You will say that everyone has seen landscapes and figures from childhood on. The question is: Has everybody also been reflexive as a child? Has everybody who has seen them also loved heath, fields, meadows,...

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.’

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind...

The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.

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