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Vincent van Gogh on Something Like God

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh L164, written December 21, 1881 (New York Graphic Society, 1958), I:288.

For me, that God of the clergymen is dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me so — so be it — but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live and others did not live; and then if we live, there is something mysterious in that. Now call it God or human nature or whatever you like, but there is something which I cannot define systematically, though it is very real, and see that as God, or as good as God.