Quotes by Dutch authors

"The best way to know God is to love many things"

"The way to know life is to love many things"

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it"

"If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?"

"I wish they would only take me as I am"

"I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners"

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process"

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day"

"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people"

"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"

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream"

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create"

"I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed"

"How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?"

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together"

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream"

"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again"

"But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things"

"As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed"

"An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men"

"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars"

"Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion"

"One must work and dare if one really wants to live"

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way"

"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"

"Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy"

"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"

"It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent"

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced"

"We must mirror God's love in the midst of a world full of hatred. We are the mirrrors of God's love, so we may show Jesus by our lives"

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself"

"You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have"

"God buries our sins in the depths of the sea and then puts up a sign that reads, No fishing"

"Hold loosely to the things of this life, so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go"

"I have experienced His presence in the deepest hell that man can create. I have really tested the promises of the Bible, and believe me, you can count on them"

"Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible"

"There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still"

"In order to realize the worth of the anchor we need to feel the stress of the storm"

"Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?"

"Jesus did not promise to change the circumstances around us. He promised great peace and pure joy to those who would learn to believe that God actually controls all things"