Tulip Fever

The world is chaotic. All artists know this, but they try to make sense of it. Sophia has made sense of it for him. She has stitched it together like the most beautiful cloak. Her love has sewn it together and they can wrap it around themselves and be safe from the world. Nobody can reach them.

Sophia will not come. How mad he is to imagine, for a moment, that she might. Why should she risk everything for him? He can offer her nothing, only love.

Even when I succeed in getting there we only have an hour. At ten o’clock the night-watch trumpet sounds and those who are out return to bed. What a blameless, hardworking nation we are. In bed by ten, faithful husbands and faithful wives. It is no city for lovers, for those out late on the street are viewed with suspicion.

After the storm the city lies becalmed. It is a sunny morning, still and cold. Branches litter the streets like broken limbs. People clear away the wreckage. They swarm around like ants whose anthill has been scuffed; how doggedly they rebuild their lives.

I’m like a mussel, closed in my shell. It’s only you who can open me.

It is a nice sunny day; his bunions have stopped hurting. There is always something to celebrate, in Gerrit’s view.

But you have to be courageous, my friend, and unafraid of pain. For only through pain will the beauty of the world be revealed.’’ He

There's no such thing as an ugly woman, just not enough brandy. - Jan Van Loos

Conduct thyself always with the same prudence as though thou went observed by ten eyes and pointed at by ten fingers. —CONFUCIUS

Next to me she seems like a clean blackboard, whereas I am full of crossed-out scribbles that I can no longer decipher.

We use God to justify our actions when in fact it is our own instinct for survival that pushes us on.

Our task is not to solve enigmas, but to be aware of them, to bow our heads before them and also to prepare the eyes for never-ending delight and wonder.

Your faith is like putty. How easily you mold it to your own desires.

There’s no such thing as an ugly woman, just not enough brandy. Of

All life is a risk—I’m a physician, I’m only too well aware of that. But some people sail closer to the wind and they are the ones after my own heart. I admire them for that, you see, because I have been incapable of doing it myself.

It is this sexual excess, no doubt, that has caused Jan to neglect his work. Lots of spermatozoa enfeebles a man and thins his blood. - Jacob

The Dutch are a hardworking, resourceful people; when their land is flooded they pump out the water and drain it again. They are used to repairing the ravages caused by the wrath of God, for He has sent these tempests to test them.