25 Quotes by Russell Shorto

Opinions differ on the question of whether a golden age is something you can experience while it’s happening or whether it only comes into focus on reflection... no matter how grand and prosperous and momentous the time in which you are living may be, its grandeur is inevitably stained by the incessant drabness of the present.

The Dutch were among the earliest adopters of a new technology – the printed book – and.

You know what I’ve often said, ever since Auschwitz. Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.” Her hand was still on his cheek, her arm.

No,” he answered. If Stanton figured he was teaching the slave a lesson, Venture knew that by staying locked up he was depriving Stanton of his labor. He would stay in chains. “Well then, I will send you to the West Indies or banish you,” Stanton replied, “for I am resolved not to keep you.” Conditions in a Caribbean plantation meant a virtual death sentence. Venture was ready for this. “I crossed the waters to come here,” he shot back, “and I am willing to cross them to return.

This book tells the story of that moment in time. It is a story of high adventure set during the age of exploration – when Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, and Captain John Smith were expanding the boundaries of the world, and Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Galileo, Descartes, Mercator, Vermeer, Harvey, and Bacon were revolutionizing human thought and expression.

As to the Dutch, he despised them. For that.

Instead, power went to those who made things happen: businessmen and local magistrates. Over time, human nature being what it is, these men would create a kind of nobility, sometimes even buying titles from cash-poor foreigners, but this in itself underscores the point. Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird.