"Christ alone - of all the philosophers, Magi, etc. - has affirmed as a principal certainty, eternal life, the infinity of time, the nothingness of death, the necessity and raison d'être of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as color, working in living flesh. That is to say, this matchless artist, hardly to be conceived by the obtuse instrument of our modern, nervous, stupefied brains, made neither statues nor pictures nor books; he loudly proclaimed that he made... living men, immortals. This is serious, especially because it is the truth."

-Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to Emile Bernard, June 1888