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
Written byVincent van Gogh1853–1890 · Dutch Post-Impressionist painter
Van Gogh wrote it in French to his brother Theo from Cuesmes in the Belgian Borinage, in the letter numbered 155 and dated between about 22 and 24 June 1880 — letter 133, dated July 1880, in the older Complete Letters numbering. The familiar English is a translator’s wording, and the version in circulation differs by two words from the 1978 Complete Letters text, which reads “warm himself at it” and “a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney.”
“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” Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes, c. 22–24 June 1880 (letter 155; letter 133 in the older numbering): "There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way." — The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (New York Graphic Society, 1978), p. 197. Written in French; English wordings vary by translation.
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In context
Evoking the world of Vincent van Gogh — Dutch Post-Impressionist painter & prolific letter-writer. Theme: "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". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "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". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The letter
Work
Letter to Theo van Gogh, no. 155 (no. 133 in the older numbering)
Written
Cuesmes, Belgium — between about 22 and 24 June 1880 (dated July 1880 in the Complete Letters)
Original language
French: “Tel a un grand foyer dans son âme et personne n’y vient jamais se chauffer…”
Translation cited
English wording in our credit line: The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (New York Graphic Society, 1978), p. 197 — the excerpt below is a different English rendering
Well, that’s how it is, can you tell what goes on within by looking at what happens without? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney, and they walk on.
All right, then, what is to be done, should one tend that inward fire, turn to oneself for strength, wait patiently - yet with how much impatience! - wait, I say, for the moment when someone who wants to comes and sits down beside one’s fire and perhaps stays on?
Letter 133 (155) · Cuesmes, 1880
Quoted from the online edition of the letters at WebExhibits (letter 133, Cuesmes, July 1880), which credits the translation to Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison. Note that it renders the sentence differently again from the widely circulated “wisp of smoke” line — a useful reminder that the English here is always a choice.
Quote Investigator ↗ traces the expression to van Gogh’s letter to Theo of 22–24 June 1880 (letter 155 in the Van Gogh Museum database), gives the French original, and reproduces the English from the 1978 Complete Letters, vol. 1, p. 197.
Wikiquote ↗ lists it in its sourced 1880 section, citing letter no. 155 as published in Vincent van Gogh – The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition.
The WebExhibits online edition ↗ carries the surrounding paragraph under the older number, letter 133, Cuesmes, July 1880.
The volume Quote Investigator cites is catalogued at the Internet Archive ↗: The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, vol. 1, New York Graphic Society, Boston, 1978.
Van Gogh’s French original of 1880 is long out of copyright — he died in 1890. The English sentence people quote is not the original: it comes from The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, an English translation first published in 1958 by the New York Graphic Society (the wording above is from the 1978 second edition, vol. 1, p. 197), so that translation remains in copyright in the United States. Quoting a sentence for commentary is ordinary fair use; reproducing the translated letters at length is not.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The attribution holds — the English drifted
This one is not a fake. Van Gogh wrote it, and the doubt worth having is about the wording, which is a translator’s choice several times over.
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Wording“warm themselves at it…coming from the chimney” altered
The English text Quote Investigator reproduces from The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 197 reads “warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way” (Quote Investigator ↗). The circulating form pairs the plural “warm themselves at it” (the Van Gogh Museum rendering) with “a wisp of smoke” (the Complete Letters rendering), and stops before the closing clause — it matches no single published translation.
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Wording“Someone has a great fire in his soul…” rival translation
Wikiquote’s sourced 1880 entry carries the Van Gogh Museum edition’s rendering — “Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way” — the same French sentence, a different English one (Wikiquote ↗).
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CreditJustin Lee Collins mis-credited
Quote Investigator records that the 2011 collection Black Cab Wisdom printed the line under Collins’s name, with van Gogh noted only parenthetically (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓Van Gogh deserves full credit: he penned it in French, to Theo, in an 1880 letter — and every English version you have seen is somebody’s translation of it (Quote Investigator ↗).
Context
A man asking to be seen
The letter was written from a rented room in Cuesmes, in the Belgian coal country, after the church authorities had removed van Gogh from the missionary post he had taken at Petit-Wasmes in January 1879 — a stretch in which, by his family’s account, he was simply idle. The fire-and-chimney sentence is not a slogan about creative genius. It sits inside a passage asking a plainer and more painful question: whether anything true about a person is legible from the outside at all.
In the same paragraph he answers himself — tend the fire, wait, and hope someone sits down beside it. Later that year, on Theo’s suggestion, he began drawing the people around him in earnest, and by November 1880 he was enrolled at the academy in Brussels.
“Can you tell what goes on within by looking at what happens without?”
He used the image more than once
Quote Investigator notes that van Gogh reached for the same fire metaphor again in a letter of December 1882, describing a great fire within an artist’s heart and studio — which is part of why the 1880 sentence reads as a settled conviction rather than a one-off flourish (Quote Investigator ↗).
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
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.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Letter 155 (133) to Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes, 1880
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes, between about 22 and 24 June 1880, letter 155 (letter 133, dated July 1880, in the older numbering). English wording quoted from The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978), 197.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-may-be-a-great-fire-in-our-soul-yet-no-one-ever-comes/