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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“He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from The Mayor of Casterbridge
“Old stories would tell how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act--to Weave--was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.”
― China Miéville, quote from Perdido Street Station
“The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, quote from Memoirs of Hadrian
“I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Imajica
“And Kay and Gerda looked in each other’s eyes, and all at once they understood the old hymn: “The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet, And angels descend there the children to greet.” There sat the two grown-up persons; grown-up, and yet children; children at least in heart; and it was summer-time; summer, glorious summer!”
― Hans Christian Andersen, quote from The Complete Fairy Tales
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