If there were a ranking of quotes’ ratios of (Quality of Sentiment)/(# of Google page results), I think this would be towards the top:

I well knew that one could break one’s arms and legs before, and that then afterwards that could get better but I didn’t know that one could break one’s brain and that afterwards that got better too.

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let743/letter.html

If you google this quote, there are only four page results. That’s too few for such nice a sentiment! Maybe it is because of the sad ending two years later.

Martin Bailey’s weekly column is a favorite and he recently highlighted this quote in his story “behind the exuberant spring landscape Van Gogh painted just weeks after slashing his ear.”

Here is the full letter.