Great Throughts Treasury

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream."

"Gauguin, that curious artist, that alien whose mien and the look in whose eyes vaguely remind one of Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man in the Galerie Lacaze — this friend of mine likes to make one feel that a good picture is equivalent to a good deed; not that he says so, but it is difficult to be on intimate terms with him without being aware of a certain moral responsibility."

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

"Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!"

"Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together."

"Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort."

"Have you seen that portrait Gauguin did of me painting sunflowers? It was really I, but it's I gone mad."

"He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole."

"Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed."

"How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun."

"How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?"

"How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth."

"How difficult it is to be simple."

"However, the painter of the future will be a colorist, such as has never yet existed. Manet was working towards it, but as you know the Impressionists have already got a stronger color than Manet. This painter of the future- I can't imagine him doing"

"I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it."

"How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone."

"I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things – which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards."

"I am an artist... It's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the opposite of saying, 'I know all about it. I've already found it.' As far as I'm concerned, the word means, 'I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.'"

"I am always hoping to make a discovery here, to express the feelings of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their minglings and their oppositions, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."

"I am crazy about two colors: carmine and cobalt. Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing so beautiful for creating atmosphere. Carmine is as warm and lively as wine... the same with emerald green."

"I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate."

"I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone."

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart."

"I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them."

"I can very well in life, and also in painting, deprive of God, but I cannot, suffering, depriving me of something bigger than me, it's my life, the power to create. And if frustrated in this power physical, seeks to create thoughts instead of children, should also be admitted into humanity."

"I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do."

"I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does."

"I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed."

"I cannot avoid that my paintings are not sold."

"I cannot do without something greater than I, something that is my life – the power to create."

"I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better."

"I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture."

"I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true."

"I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream."

"I come back dissatisfied - I put it away, and when I have rested a little, I go and look at it with a kind of fear. Then I am still dissatisfied, because I still have that splendid scene too clearly in my mind to be satisfied with what I have made of it. But I find in my work an echo of what struck me..."

"I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don't invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It's a question of picking out what one wants from nature."

"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."

"I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? It will be a hard pull for me; the tide rises high, almost to the lips and perhaps higher still, how can I know? But I shall fight my battle, and sell my life dearly, and try to win and get the best of it."

"I certainly hope to sell in the course of time, but I think I shall be able to influence it most effectively by working steadily on, and that at the present moment making desperate efforts to force the work I am doing now upon the public would be pretty useless."

"I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time. The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty"

"I consciously choose the dog's path through life. I shall be poor; I shall be a painter."

"I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortunes, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be forever, will it be for eternity?"

"I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something."

"I don't know if I can convey the postman as I feel him... Unfortunately he cannot pose, and a painting demands an intelligent model."

"I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream."

"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream."

"I feel such creative power in myself that I know for sure that the time will arrive when, so to speak, I shall regularly make something good every day. But very rarely a day passes that I do not make something, though it is not yet the real thing I want to make."

"I feel as if it is with the people as with the grain: if one is not sown as a seed in the ground to germinate, so what, then you grind just to make bread."

"I feel that art is not something inherently more people love."

"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."