Paul Valery

One must always apologize for talking about painting.  

Vincent van Gogh

Painting demands an intelligent model.  
[Letter to his brother Theo, August 1888]

Vincent van Gogh

Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more.  Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her.  If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere. [Letter to Theo, 1873]

Vincent van Gogh

I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
[Letter to Theo, Letter 533, Arles, 8 September 1888]

Vincent van Gogh

To paint nature you must be in it a long time"  [Letter June 25 1889]

Vincent van Gogh

I am always in the hope to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors - colors which marry each other . . . complement each other as a man and a woman do.

Vasari

As long as art lives never shall I accept that men are truly dead. [Lives of the Artists, 1568 edition frontispiece inscription]

Hans van de Velde

The line is a force which stems from the energy of him who drew it.  (1902)

Voltaire

Common sense is not so common.

Voltaire

History is after all only a pack of tricks we play on the dead.

Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant position, but certainty is absurd.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow   [New York Times May 24, 1999]