“When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”
Quote in a letter to Theo van Gogh, from Arles, c. Saturday, 29 September 1888; as cited in An Examined Faith : Social Context and Religious Commitment (1991) by James Luther Adams and George K. Beach, p. 259
1880s, 1888
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Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890Related quotes

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 49.
1960's

“I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake.”
Starting from Paumanok. 7
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“When I go out into the barrios, I get dressed because I know my little people want to see a star.”
Quoted in The Los Angeles Times (1980).
Context: I am my little people's star and slave. When I go out into the barrios, I get dressed because I know my little people want to see a star. Other presidents' wives have gone to the barrios wearing housedresses and slippers. That's not what people want to see. People want someone they can love, someone to set an example.

Do I Have to Say the Words?, written by Bryan Adams, Mutt Lange, and Jim Vallance
Song lyrics, Waking Up the Neighbours (1991)

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself — that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life — life will be wrested from me.
Kenneth Noland, p. 9
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Dijkstra (1973) in personal communication to Donald Knuth, quoted in Knuth's "Structured Programming with go to Statements".
1970s

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary