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

That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such- be it so; but I love, and...

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the...

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet, you can’t even say it’s blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken...

Love is eternal – the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and...

If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one’s love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. Sometimes...

Only when I fall do I get up again.

What I am 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...

If you hear a voice within you saying, ”You are not a painter,” then by all means paint ‘¦ and that voice will be silenced.

How difficult it is to be simple.

The best way to know God is to love many things.

Dans chaque vie où de la pluie doit tomber, quelques jours seront sombres et lugubres – c’est vrai, il ne peut en aller autrement, et pourtant je me demande si le nombre de jours sombres...

Fortunately for me, I know well enough what I want, and am basically utterly indifferent to the criticism that I work to hurriedly. In answer to that, I have done some things even more hurriedly...

There may be a time in life when one is tired of everything and feels as if all one does is wrong, and there maybe some truth in it- do you think this is a...

And sometimes there is relief, sometimes there is new inner energy, and one stands up after it; till at last, someday, one perhaps doesn’t stand up any more, que soit, but that is nothing extraordinary,...

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

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...

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things...

La tristesse durera toujours.[The sadness will last forever.]

It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite,...

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

One wants to be an honest man; one is so, one works hard; but still one cannot make both ends meet; on must give up the work, there is no chance of carrying it out...

I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at...

It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill- it’s a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I’m all right when I completely immerse myself in work,...

However, the painter of the future will be a colorist, such as has never yet existed. Manet was working towards it, but as you know the Impressionists have already got a stronger color than Manet....

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colors

But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand....

It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation—of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things—the thought of God comes into...

So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one’s soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing...

I wish they would only take me as I am.

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

Red Vineyard at Arles.

It is good to 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 well done.

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke

What a splendid thing watercolor is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it

Winning isn’t everything…it’s the only thing.

I’m able to get by very well in life, and also with my work, without beloved God. But I, a suffering human being, can not survive without there being something greater than myself, which for...