I shut my eyes in order to see.
Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland – those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.
Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.
Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!
We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.
I have come to an unalterable decision – to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.
Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.
Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.
Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable.
Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.
The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.
And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature’s means.
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.
Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.
Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.