It is better to have done something than to have been someone.
I didn’t become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one.
I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough.
Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.
It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.
I’m enjoying the most perfect tranquillity, free from all worries, and in consequence would like to stay this way forever, in a peaceful corner of the countryside like this.
I am good at only two things, and those are gardening and painting.
Everything changes, even stone.
When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think any more.
I had so much fire in me and so many plans...
My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it’s enchanting, it’s delicious.
I’m never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.
I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint...
All of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was.
Colors pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.
I sometimes feel ashamed that I am devoting myself to artistic pursuits while so many of our people are suffering and dying for us. It’s true that fretting never did any good.
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.