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Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh Books

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Vincent van Gogh

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Van Gogh's

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Letters

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Cartas a Theo

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Dear Theo

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Van Gogh: fields

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Related Quotes

“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.”

“Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its founder was sublime- I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness mesmerized even me, in my youth- but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore, etc, To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is the opposite.ov”

“If there is anything I regret then it is that period when I allowed mystical and theological profundities to mislead me into withdrawing too much into myself. …..When you wake up in the morning and find you are not alone but can see a fellow creature there in the half-light, it makes the world look so much more welcoming. Much ,more welcoming than the devotional journals and whitewashed church walls beloved of clergymen.”

“And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her—it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton—a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room.”

“There was once a man who went to church and asked, 'Can it be that my ardour has deceived me, that I have taken a wrong turning and managed things badly? Oh, if only I could be rid of this doubt and know for certain I shall come out victorious and succeed in the end.' And then a voice answered him, 'And if you were certain, what would you do then? Act now as if you were certain and you will not be disappointed.' Then the man went on his way, not unbelieving but believing, and returned to his work no longer doubting or wavering.”

“Büyük sanatçıların, gerçek ustaların, başyapıtlarında bize söylemek istediklerinin gerçek anlamını kavramaya çalışmak da insanı Tanrı'ya götürür. Biri kitabında yazmış ya da söylemiş diyeceğini, öteki ise yaptığı resimde. Sonra, sırf İncil'i oku, o zaman düşünürsün işte, çok düşünürsün, her zaman düşünürsün...İyi ya, çok düşün, her zaman düşün, o zaman sen bilincine bile varmadan düşüncelerin, olağan düzeyin üstüne çıkar. Okumasını biliyoruz ya, okuyalım öyleyse!”

“...beşikteki bir çocuğun gözlerinde de onu uzun süre yeterince seyredersen eğer, sonsuzluğu görürsün. Kısacası, bu konuda hiçbir şey bilmiyorum, ama işte, her gün yaşadığımız günlük, gerçek yaşamı tek yönlü bir tren yolculuğu haline getiren de bu bilmeme duygusunun ta kendisi...Hızla ilerliyorsun, ama hiçbir nesneyi yakından ayırt edemiyorsun ve en önemlisi, lokomotifi göremiyorsun...”

“All the same, I'm sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one's will and love of self. But that's no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life—artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don't think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.”

“Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!”

“Recently I've been working very hard and quickly; in this way I try to express the desperately fast passage of things in modern life. Yesterday, in the rain, I painted a large landscape with fields as far as the eye can see, viewed from a height, different kinds of greenery, a dark green field of potatoes, the rich purple earth between the regular rows of plants, to one side a field of peas white with bloom, a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of tall, ripe, fawn-coloured grass, then some wheat, some poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills at the foot of which a train is passing, leaving an immense trail of white smoke over the greenery. A white road crosses the canvas, on the road a little carriage and some white houses with bright red roofs alongside a road. Fine drizzle streaks the whole with blue or grey lines.”

“But, you will say, what a dreadful person you are, with your impossible religious notions and idiotic scruples. If my ideas are impossible or idiotic then I would like nothing better than to be rid of them. But this is roughly the way I actually see things. In Le philosophe sous les toits by Souvestre you can read what a man of the people, a simple craftsman, pitiful if you will, thinks of his country: ‘Tu n’as peut-être jamais pensé á ce que c’est la patrie, reprit-il, en me posant une main sur l’épaule; c’est tout ce qui t’entoure, tout ce qui t’a élevé et nourri, tout ce que tu as aimé. Cette campagne que tu vois, ces maisons, ces arbres, ces jeunes filles qui passent lá en riant, c’est la patrie! Les lois qui te protégent, le pain qui paye ton travail, les paroles que tu échanges, la joie et la tristesse qui te viennent des hommes et des choses parmi lesquels tu vis, c’est la patrie! La petite chambre oú tu as autrefois vu ta mere, les souvenirs qu’elle t’a laisses, la terre oú elle repose, c’est la patrie! Tu la vois, tu la respires partout! Figure toi, tes droits et tes devoirs, tes affections et tes besoins, tes souvenirs et ta reconnaissance, réunis tout ça sous un seul nom et ce nom sera la patrie.”