Russell Shorto · 384 pages
Rating: (6.6K votes)
“It was possible, as far as they knew, that the western shore, which in fifty years’ time would be christened New Jersey, was in fact the backdoor of China, that India, with its steamy profusion of gods and curries, lay just beyond those bluffs.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
“It was the Dutch of this era who invented the idea of the home as a personal, intimate space; one might say they invented coziness.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
“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.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
“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.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
Russell Shorto
Born place: Johnstown, Pennsylvania, The United States
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“do you know that’s the same woman”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
“I didn't know what to do with this new reality, the horror of my conception. I wanted to bury it in the backyard, far away from anyone's eyes. My skin crawled with knowledge, with the evil that I'd looked into, that had created me. I took long showers. Nothing helped. The dirt was on the inside. (31)”
― Chevy Stevens, quote from Never Knowing
“To reproach Hitchcock for specializing in suspense is to accuse him of being the least boring of filmmakers; it is also tantamount to blaming a lover who instead of concentrating on his own pleasure insists on sharing it with his partner.”
― François Truffaut, quote from Hitchcock
“Your sense of humor is not for everyone, but I have to say it's growing on me. Like an out-of-control fungus.”
― quote from Beast Behaving Badly
“So why was the goddess of Memory linked with artistic creation,you may well ask"
"Because for the Greeks creativity wasn't associated with the idea of producing something new-as it is today.The artist built upon, or reworked, the great intellectual and cultural achievements of the past.
So a great memory,you see, was considered a key part of creative activity- it gave the artist more material to draw upon, as well as a richer, more complex intellect. When James Joyce said ' I invented nothing, but I forgot nothing either," I think he was referring to exactly this sort of thing. ”
― Jeffrey Moore, quote from The Memory Artists
Wolf in White Van
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