Oubah Saïd > Oubah's Quotes

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly'.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“The sunflower is mine, in a way.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Someday death will take us to another star.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.”
― Vincent Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“If you don’t have a dog--at least one--there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“I often think of you all, one cannot do what one wants in life. The more you feel attached to a spot, the more ruthlessly you are compelled to leave it, but the memories remain, and one remembers - as in a looking glass, darkly - one's absent friends.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.”
― Vincent van Gogh, Dear Theo

“An artist needn't be a clergyman or a church warden, but he must have a warm heart for his fellow men”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“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.”
― Vincent van Gogh, Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh - III vols

“The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Modern reality has got such a hold on us that... when we attempt to reconstruct the ancient days in our thoughts...the minor events of our lives tear us away from our meditations, and... thrust us back into our personal [problems]”
― Vincent van Gogh