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Quotes by Dutch Authors
"Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."
"Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."
"Mankind's problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is world government."
"The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel."
"If we come to power we will abolish the multi-ethnic society."
"Art is to console those who are broken by life."
"It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide."
"Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work."
"I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it."
"Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion."
"I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made.."
"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures."
"Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble."
"It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation-of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things-the thought of God comes into one's mind."
"Great things are not something accidental but must certainly be willed."
"I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream."
"But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things."
"My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth."
"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."
"One must work and dare if one really wants to live."
"One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it."
"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."
"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done."
"Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!"
"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."
"The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings-not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling."
"What does it mean to care? Let me start by saying that the word care has become a very ambivalent word. When someone says: 'I will take care of him!' it is more likely an announcement of an impending attack than of a tender compassion. And besides this ambivalence, the word is most often used in a negative way. 'Do you want coffee or tea?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to stay home or go to a movie?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to walk or go by car?' 'I don't care.' This expression of indifference toward choices in life has become commonplace. And often it seems that not to care has become more acceptable than to care, and a carefree life-style more attractive than a careful one."
"We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: "He is the one. But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road."
"Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place."
"Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love."
"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
"The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too."
"I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime."
"A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke."
"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."
"And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them."
"The way to know life is to love many things."
"Jesus, the Blessed Child of God, is merciful. Showing mercy is different from having pity. Pity connotes distance, even looking down upon. When a beggar asks for money and you give him something out of pity, you are not showing mercy. Mercy comes from a compassionate heart; it comes from a desire to be an equal. Jesus didn't want to look down on us. He wanted to become one of us and feel deeply with us.When Jesus called the only son of the widow of Nain to life, he did so because he felt the deep sorrow of the grieving mother in his own heart (see Luke 7:11-17). Let us look at Jesus when we want to know how to show mercy to our brothers and sisters."
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