“If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works”

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Context: If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works, in which we see some traces of him because they are his images, how much more just is it to consider in the productions of minds the efforts which they make to imitate the essential truth, even in shunning it, and to remark wherein they attain it and wherein they wander from it, as I have endeavored to do in this study.

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Blaise Pascal 144
French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Chri… 1623–1662

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(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb het onderwerp bestudeerd en geschilderd direct naar de natuur [zijn schilderij 'Schevenings strandgezicht' uit 1869] en ik heb getracht dat motief eenvoudig en ongekunsteld weer te geven, zonder er een schilderij met veel éclat van te willen maken.

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