“Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.”

—  Vincent Van Gogh

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)

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 "Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that…" by Vincent Van Gogh?
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890

Related quotes

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Bodhicitta is the medicine which revives and gives life to every sentient being who even hears of it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom (1998) edited by Renuka Singh
Context: Bodhicitta is the medicine which revives and gives life to every sentient being who even hears of it. When you engage in fulfilling the needs of others, your own needs are fulfilled as a by-product.

Michel Henry photo

“Material phenomenology is able to designate this invisible phenomenological substance. It is not a nothing but rather an affect, or put otherwise, it is what makes every affect, ultimately every affection, and every thing possible. The phenomenological substance that material phenomenology has in view is the pathetic immediacy in which life experiences itself. Life is itself nothing other than this pathetic embrace and, in this way, is phenomenality itself according to the how of its original phenomenalization. Life is thus not a something, like the object of biology, but the principle of every thing. It is a phenomenological life in the radical sense where life defines the essence of pure phenomenality and accordingly of being insofar as being is coextensive with the phenomenon and founded on it. For what could I know that could not appear ?”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2-3
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

“You know, there are people dead and buried in their graves still affecting people, because no one ever forgave them for what they did”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Forgiveness" (7 July 2007)
Context: If that is not the case, then we are talking about something that happened in the past, even if it was today, this morning, but it's over. You know, there are people dead and buried in their graves still affecting people, because no one ever forgave them for what they did — that's what not forgiving does — it lets an event live and live with bitterness and hurt, when it needs to be let go.

Yusuf Qaradawi photo

“Host: In a nutshell, is what happened Islamic or un-Islamic?
Qaradhawi: The truth is that what happened is a reaction to these barbaric acts (in Abu Ghureib prison)…I say that the general atmosphere affects behavior… Even though Islam states that prisoners should be treated decently, there are those who allow killing a prisoner in certain circumstances.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Dr. Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi about the Murder of American Citizen, Nick Berg http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/82.htm May 2004.
Murder of Nick Berg

Angela Davis photo

“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Source: "Masked Racism" (1998)

Jung Myung Seok photo

“Learn every day. Human beings must learn and know. It is only by learning and knowing, that they can raise their ‘level’. People are affected by what their eyes see, what their ears hear and by how they learn.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from Proverbs Blog https://providencepath.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/jung-myung-seok-learn-every-day/

Theodore L. Cuyler photo

“A genuine revival means a trimming of personal lamps.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 521.

Samuel Beckett photo

“What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)
Context: What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“I am forced to conclude that being right has little to do with holding a woman’s affections.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXVI : The Keys to the City, p. 243

Eckhart Tolle photo

“Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural still exists.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 7

Related topics