How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent Van GoghRead
It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Greatness is achieved through both instinct and persistent effort to bridge the gap between feelings and abilities.
In this quote, Vincent Van Gogh emphasizes that achieving greatness requires more than just following one's impulses or feelings; it also demands a deliberate and patient effort to overcome the barriers that often exist between our emotions and our true potential. This suggests that success is a combination of passion and hard work, where individuals must continually refine themselves and break down the mental walls that inhibit their capabilities.
Themes
GreatnessSuccessImpulsesPatienceCapability
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech to inspire a team to push beyond their limits.
More from Vincent Van Gogh
All quotes →Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
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To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
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Great things do not just happen by impulse, _x000D_ but as a succession of small things linked together.
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The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
Vincent Van GoghRead
To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
Vincent Van GoghRead
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