5 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as Vincent van Gogh wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around.
How these quotes were checked
Vincent van Gogh left more than eight hundred letters, mostly to his brother Theo, and they are the only place his voice survives — which has not stopped the internet from inventing more of it. A line enters this collection only when its wording has been verified against the published English translations of the letters.
The two most shared “Van Gogh” quotations appear nowhere in the letters. Both are documented below.
A sentence linked to Hemingway may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.
A full-text search across the published translations of Van Gogh's letters finds no version of this sentence. It circulates on posters without a citation; the letters' real sentences about dreams and painting say other, better things.
Not found anywhere in the published letters. Like the dream-painting line, it is attributed to Van Gogh only on quote sites, never with a letter number — and the letters are numbered, so a real source would be easy to give.
The best way of knowing God is to love many things.
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
No. The sentence appears nowhere in his published letters — the only record of his voice — and circulates without any citation. It is a poster line, not a Van Gogh line.
There is no evidence he did. Nothing like it appears in the published letters, and the attributions never cite a letter — though his letters are numbered and easy to cite when a quotation is real.
From the July 1880 letter to his brother Theo: “The best way of knowing God is to love many things.” The same period of letters carries his resolution as he became an artist: “In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil…and I will go on with my drawing.”
Almost entirely from his letters — more than eight hundred survive, mostly to his brother Theo, written in Dutch and French and translated in the standard editions. He published nothing in his lifetime, so the letters are the source of record for anything he is quoted as saying.
In an October 1882 letter to Theo: “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” He was writing about how paintings get made; the sentence has since been applied to everything else.
Vincent's younger brother, an art dealer in Paris who supported him financially for most of his working life and received the majority of his letters. Nearly every famous Van Gogh quotation comes from a letter to Theo.
The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.
First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Vincent van Gogh page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Vincent van Gogh page.
Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.
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