“If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies; if the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.”
-Vincent van Gogh
“For love is something so positive, so strong, so real that it is as impossible for one who loves to take back that feeling as it is to take his own life. If you reply to this by saying, “But there are people who put an end to their own life,” I simply answer, “I really do not think I am a man with such inclinations.”Life has become very dear to me, and I am very glad that I love. My life and my love are one.”
-Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Theo (November 7th, 1881)
“Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest comers. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”
- Vincent van Gogh, to Theo van Gogh (21 July 1882)
Wheat Fields Near Arles, Vincent van Gogh
“They said I was out of my mind, but I knew myself that it was not true, for the very reason that I felt my own disease deep within me, and tried to remedy it. I exhausted myself with hopeless, unsuccessful efforts, it is true, but because of that fixed idea of reaching a normal point of view again, I never mistook my own desperate doings, worryings and drudgings for my real innermost self. At least I always felt, “Just let me do something, be somewhere, and it must redress itself. I will rise above it, let me keep hold of patience to redress things.”
-Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, (12 October 1883)
“It is practically always so painful for me to speak to other people.”
-Vincent van Gogh , Letter to Theo (August 17th, 1883)
“It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after. A work that is good may not last forever, but the thought expressed by it will, and the work itself will surely survive for a very long time, and those who come later can do no more than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and copy their example.”
-Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (Amsterdam, 3 March 1878)
Take a sneak peek at the NBC 10 special ‘Van Gogh Up Close,’ based on our current exhibition and airing in full on March 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Source: philamuseum
