“Believe me, I work, I drudge, I grind all day long and I do so with pleasure, but I should get very much discouraged if I could not go on working as hard or even harder... I feel, Theo, that there is a power within me, and I do what I can to bring it out and free it. It is hard enough, all the worry and bother with my drawings, and if I had too many other cares and could not pay the models I should lose my head.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Jan. 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 20 (letter 171)
1880s, 1882

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Vincent Van Gogh 238

Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890

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“I had been journeying to and fro on the face of a fine broad bit of English earth, seeking what wages I could earn, what work I could get, and what facts I could devour. I found, I got, I devoured, every morsel which came in my way. I read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, as the prayer book says somewhere, all I could lay my hands or ears or eyes on. At the same time I was taking in a supply of facts which would not be digested—tough facts about the land and the labourer, that accumulated and lay within my mind, heavy as a lump of lead, and hard as a stone. No matter what I did, whether I was working with my hands or my head, that mass of indigestible facts was always in the background, worrying and bothering me. I got no peace; it worried and bothered me more and more as each year went by.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), pp. 42-43

“As I feel a need to speak out frankly, I cannot hide from you that I am overcome by a feeling of great care, depression, a "je ne sais quoi" of discouragement and despair more than I can tell.
I take it so much to heart that I do not get on better with people in general; it quite worries me because on it depends so much my success in carrying out my work.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; 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 328) p. 21
1880s, 1883

“.. so before I died I wanted to paint a large canvas that I had worked out in my head, and all month long I worked [on Tahiti] day and night at fever pitch... It's all done without a model.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

late quote about the start of his famous large painting 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going'
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), pp. 159-160: in a letter from Tahiti to a friend, 1898

“I was lying in an easy-chair, in front of a garden. I saw that the spiritual power was still active in me: I could go on with occult experiments in spite of the illness. I used to concentrate on things and persons and circumstances and wanted to see if the power worked. It worked very well on the mental and vital planes. Then I broadened the field of activity. I could go on doing my work in various parts of France and America and other places. I could clearly see the faces of the persons worked upon. They could be made to do what they by themselves could not. These were controlled experiments … I could see that nothing could stop the work: even without my body the work could go on … Wherever the call was, I could attend.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Her notings in the diary when she was very ill in April 1915, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo", also in Chapter 10 Return to France http://www.motherandsriaurobindo.org/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-00%20e-library@@@/-03%20disciples/k%20r%20srinivas%20iyengar/On%20The%20Mother/-12_Return%20to%20France.htm, p. 136

“I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

"To the Reader"
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

“And then the wish to make compositions with figures. For this I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take, I thought, two weeks and then I could realize my compositions…I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940…Nothing was as I imagined. A head, became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Peter Selz, Alberto Giacometti. Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago [and others], distributed by Doubleday, 1965. p. 26

“I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"1941", p. 336
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“I was fired because that job had little to do with who I am, with my true nature and gifts, what I care and do not care about. My resort to adolescent rebellion reflected that simple fact. … I was laughing to keep myself sane. Perhaps the research I was doing was what a good sociologist “ought” to do, but it felt meaningless to me, and I felt fraudulent doing it. Those feelings were harbingers of things to come, things that eventually led me out of the profession altogether. Obviously I should have dealt with my feeling more directly and exercised more self-control. Either I should have quit that job under my own steam or settled in and done the work properly. But sometimes the "shoulds" do not work because the life one is living runs crosswise to the grain of one's soul. At that time of my life, I had no feeling for the grain of my soul and of which way was crosswise. Not knowing what was driving me, I behaved with blind but blissful unconsciousness—and reality responded by giving me a big and hard-to-take clue about who I am.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), pp. 40-41

“I want to know that I've done everything I could every day I think of all those people out there who are depending on us. I think about it. It does make me feel we need more work, more help. Get those spectators on the playing field, or out of the arena. Really, that is how I feel about it. I do what I can, and I do it the way I do everything… there's nothing part of the way for me.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Transcript of Tom Cruise on Scientology (January 16, 2008)

“It's taken me 30 years to get this way, and I don't intend to let go. I work hard, but I play hard, too, and that's the one part of me that nobody sees. But I intend to be around for a long time yet.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

Why Torchwood star and talent show judge John Barrowman would do anything for success, Michael Hellicar, 2008-04-11, 2008-04-11, dailymail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=558746&in_page_id=1773,

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Vincent Van Gogh 238

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