Vincent van Gogh

1853–1890 · Dutch Post-Impressionist painter & prolific letter-writer

Van Gogh took a missionary posting at Petit-Wasmes in the coal-mining Borinage in January 1879, lived as poorly as the congregation he served, and was dismissed by the church authorities; he was still adrift in the spring of 1880 when he wrote the letter this line comes from. Later that year, at Theo’s suggestion, he began drawing the people around him in earnest and enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. The roughly 900 surviving letters — most of them to Theo — are why so much of what the world quotes as “van Gogh” is writing rather than painting.

Traced to source

6 quotes we’ve traced to Vincent van Gogh

“I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it”

Verified

“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm themselves at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney”

Verified

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together”

Attributed

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced”

Attributed

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it”

Disputed

“Normality is a well-paved street; it is good for walking, but no flowers will grow there”

Disputed

Not actually Vincent van Gogh

Often misattributed to Vincent van Gogh

Famous lines widely pinned on Vincent van Gogh that we’ve traced to someone else.

“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream”

actually Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom”

actually Émile Zola

“Normality is a well-paved street; it is good for walking, but no flowers will grow there”

actually Unknown

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