I Would Rather Die Of Passion

Written from Nuenen on 2 October 1884 (Letter 464), this line is not originally van Gogh's own words — he was quoting a passage from Émile Zola's novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), spoken by the character Octave Mouret. Van Gogh cited the French original directly and used it to frame his own philosophy about living and working with intensity. The quote is now overwhelmingly associated with van Gogh rather than Zola, making it one of the most notable cases of shifting attribution in art history.