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.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
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
Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
Don’t lose heart if it’s very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.
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 one’s mind.
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.
…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.
Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.
To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life
And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.
My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like – but more true than the literal truth.
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.
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.
I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..
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.
What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.
One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint darkness, which nevertheless has light in it.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke
As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
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 power to create.
Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.
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.
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.
Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you’re put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.
It’s better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.
You can live to be old or young, but you’ll always have moments when you lose your head.
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it absolutely.
One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.
Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
Still there is a calm pure harmony and music inside of me.
I am seeking I am striving I am in it with all my heart.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
I feel the need of relations and friendship of affection of friendly intercourse. … I cannot miss these things without feeling as does any other intelligent man a void and a deep need.
But are not this struggle and even the mistakes one may make better and do they not develop us more than if we kept systematically away from emotions?
One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.
Great things are not something accidental but must certainly be willed.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Great things are not done by impulse but by a series of small things brought together.
It’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours but the art of words exists too and will never be less important.
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.