Quote Of The Day By Vincent Van Gogh: 'Find Things Beautiful As Much As...'

Vincent Van Gogh was a prolific Dutch artist, famous for his Post-Impressionist work. His "Starry Night" painting, which you can see at New York's Museum of Modern Art, is one of the most recognizable in the world. Along with being a talented painter, Van Gogh was also a troubled man who dealt with mental health problems his entire life. In fact, he infamously cut off his left ear, and you can see him with a bandage over it in a number of his self-portraits.

Van Gogh was born in Zundert, in the southern part of the Netherlands, in 1853. As an adult, he worked a variety of different jobs, including as an assistant teacher and bookseller. It wasn't until he was 27 that he decided to try his hand at being an artist, and he painted nearly 900 oil paintings in the next decade before his young death. Van Gogh shot himself while he was living in Auvers-sur-Oise, outside of Paris, and he died on July 29, 1890, at the age of 37. Even with his depressive episodes and his manner of death, Van Gogh was still someone who could see beauty all around him, and he was able to capture and reflect that beauty for others to enjoy with his art.

Along with being an incredible painter, Van Gogh had a way with words. He was a frequent letter writer, and hundreds of his letters still survive. In them, we're able to get insights into the artist's thoughts and passions, and that's why a passage from one of his letters is our quote of the day.

"Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful." Vincent Van Gogh shared this wisdom in one of his many letters to his brother, Theo Van Gogh, in January 1874 while Vincent was living in England (via Van Gogh Letters). He was applauding his brother's taste in art when he wrote this, and he included a list of artists that he liked.

Theo was an art dealer, a job that Vincent had for a time as well, and he had long been a supporter of his older brother's artistic endeavors. Theo often helped his brother out when things weren't going well for Vincent financially, and the two brothers wrote to each other frequently. While Vincent's letter to Theo is over 150 years old, his musings about beauty still hold true today.

Vincent Van Gogh was able to recognize that there is beauty in the world that not everyone looks for or recognizes, and he wanted to make sure that his brother was looking for it too. The beauty is there, and painters typically have the perspective to see it, but most people have to make an effort to look for it. It can be easy to get caught up in all the noise, tragedy, and struggles of day-to-day life and then miss what's right there in front of you. Make sure to take the time to actively look for what's good and wonderful. Just like being happy, finding beauty is often a choice, and sometimes not an easy one.

Van Gogh's advice is akin to the more modern self-help idea of mindfulness and consciously looking for reasons to be grateful — one of the things that can be good for self-care. If you want to take the painter's quote to the next level, you could start a journal of the things that you find beautiful in your life, no matter how big or small. It's likely that the more you look for it, the more beauty will reveal itself to you.

• "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."
• "Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all."
• "Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored."
• "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"
• "Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."