Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.
There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!
As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.
Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.
Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle – more like music and less like sculpture – and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.
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.
Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.
To know life, one must love many things.
I work even in the middle of the day, in the full sunshine, and I enjoy it like a cicada.
Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet – the marrying of form and colour.
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.
How difficult it is to be simple!
To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange.
The earth from afar shines like a star.
Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way.
That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.
I want to paint humanity, humanity and again humanity.
The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.