“When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there. By witnessing peasant life continually at all hours of the day I have become so absorbed in it that I hardly ever think of anything else.”

—  Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Summer 1885; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 400) p. 21
1880s, 1885

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future,…" by Vincent Van Gogh?
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890

Related quotes

Louis Pasteur photo

“The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

As quoted in "Louis Pasteur" in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
As quoted in Letter to an Atheist (2007) by Michael Patrick Leahy, p. 61
His descendents, Louis-Pasteur Vallery-Radot, and Maurice Vallery-Radot disputed the authenticity of such statements. According to Maurice Vallery-Radot, Pasteur (1994), p. 378, the attributed assertion first appeared in the Semaine religieuse .... du diocèse de Versailles (6 October 1895), p. 153, shortly after the death of Pasteur.
Disputed
Variant: I have the faith of a Breton peasant and by the time I die I hope to have the faith of a Breton peasant's wife.

Glen Cook photo

“They (i. e., the peasants) could imagine no future more grim than their past.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 86 (p. 575)

Henri Barbusse photo

“I think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future, — it was going to be like the past!”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition
Context: I think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future, — it was going to be like the past! And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger to be warm once more in the rain and the cold: to enclose myself in myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live.

James Frey photo

“More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn't alone.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 80
Source: A Million Little Pieces (2003)

“We as a society have become very independent, and we have become proficient in so many things, I think some of us feel we don't have that reliance on God as much as it was once felt. But the fact is we need (God) more than ever.”

Anthony F. Tonnos (1935) Canadian Catholic bishop

Bishop Tonnos retires after almost three decades of service https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2010/11/08/bishop-tonnos-retires-after-almost-three-decades-of-service.html (November 8, 2010)

Ai Weiwei photo

“It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happiness.... You become bitter.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

Adolf Hitler photo

“The hammer will once more become the symbol of the German worker and the sickle the sign of the German peasant,...”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: May Day Speech at Tempelhof Air Field, Berlin http://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Collection%20of%20Speeches%20-%201922-1945.pdf (1 May 1934), Adolf Hitler: Collection of Speeches 1922-1945, ReichsMilitariaCom; 1st edition (2016), p. 184

“Talia: I was brought up to respect older people and peasants… not that you're…

Jack: (clears throat) Quit while you’re ahead

Meryl: Ahead? She just called mom and old peasant.”

Alex Flinn (1966) American children's writer

Source: A Kiss in Time

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I have always felt that the best security for civilisation is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech at the opening of Shaftesburgh Park Estate (18 July 1874), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 38.

“The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Related topics