The simple minded know many things that the wise ignore.
I thought I would be understood without words.
You can live to be old or young, but you’ll always have moments when you lose your head.
I would sooner paint people’s eyes than cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is lacking in a cathedral – however solemn and impressive it may be. To my mind a man’s soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a streetwalker, is more interesting.
To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun. That’s certainly no realistic trompe l’oeil, but something that really exists, isn’t it?
How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won’t do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.
For me, life may well continue in solitude. I have never perceived those to whom I have been most attached other than as through a glass, darkly.
At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have no will, and hardly any desires, or none at all that are to do with ordinary life.
The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings – not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling.
I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.
I keep hoping that I’ll come up with something. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express that thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun.
So don’t study and swot too much, for that makes one sterile. Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don’t take art or love too seriously- there is very little one can do about it.
I knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.
What kind of love was it that I felt when I was twenty? It is difficult to define – my physical passions were very weak then, perhaps because of a few years of great poverty and hard work. But my intellectual passions were strong, meaning that without asking anything in return, without wanting any pity, I wanted only to give, but not to receive. Foolish, wrong, exaggerated, proud, rash – for in love one must not only give, but also take; and, reversing it, one must not only take but also give.
Housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the following plate was completed in 1886, portraying the unusual subject of a skeleton smoking a cigarette. The work has roused many interpretations, including a depiction of mortality and a prophetic cry of the dangers of tobacco. In the next two years, van Gogh painted two other paintings with skulls, illustrating his fascination with the macabre subject.
That thought, I can’t find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man’s soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion.
There are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast.
But what is it to me whether my chance is slight or great? I mean, must I consider this when I love? No – no reckoning; one loves because one loves. Then we keep our heads clear, and do not cloud our minds, nor do we hide our feelings, nor smother the fire and light, but simply say: Thank God, I love.
And yet I go on; if we are tired isn’t it then because we have already walked a long way, and if it is true that man has his battle to fight on earth, is not then the feeling of weariness and the burning of the head a sign that we have been struggling? When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing we fight a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.
Every man must bear his own burden.