“If he had left no pictures and we only possessed his amazing letters, we should still be able to appreciate a moral stature in him which often suggests the character of a saint.”
-Raymond Cogniat
Letter 543:
“I have a terrible lucidity at moments, these days when nature is so beautiful, I am not conscious of myself any more, and the picture comes to me as in a dream.”
Letter 604:
“For I see in this reaper – a vague figure fighting like the devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task – I see in him the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping. So it is – if you like – the opposite of that sower I tried to do before. But there’s nothing sad in this death, it goes its way in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold….but what I have sought is the ‘almost smiling.’ It is all yellow, except for a line of violet hills, a pale, fair yellow. I find it queer that I saw it like this from between the iron bars of a cell.”
Letter 518:
“Whence comes it that in the present instance of our uncle’s death the face of the deceased was calm, peaceful, and grave, whereas it is a fact that he was rarely that way while living, either in youth or age?”
Letter 531:
“I want to say something comforting, as music is comforting.”
Letter 133:
“Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the cage.”