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I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.

Vincent Van Gogh

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Vincent Van Gogh
Age: 37 †
Born: 1853
Born: March 30
Died: 1890
Died: July 29
Botanical Illustrator
Draftsperson
Drawer
Etcher
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
Printmaker
Brooklyn
New York
Vincent Willem van Gogh
Vincent-Willem van Gogh
van Gogh
Fan-kao
van gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Wensheng Fangu
Fan-ku
v. van gogh
Fan'gao
Fangu
Gogh
j. van gogh
Something
Paint
Eyes
Eye
Board
White
Spot
Become
Boards
Look
Spots
Looks
Strikes
Must
Conviction

More quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

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In a sense I'm glad that I've never learned how to paint.
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We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: “He is the one.” But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.
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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. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
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Art is to console those who are broken by life.
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My great longing is to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes in reality, so that they may become, yes, lies if you like - but truer than the literal truth.
Vincent Van Gogh
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To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of Kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of light tone against a somber background to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance.
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Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.
Vincent Van Gogh
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To die for the sake of dying - I prefer to die of passion than to die of boredom!
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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.
Vincent Van Gogh
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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.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Here everything is so wholly what I consider beautiful. In other words, there is peace here.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.
Vincent Van Gogh
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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
Vincent Van Gogh
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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 of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.
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Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.
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When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.
Vincent Van Gogh
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It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
Vincent Van Gogh