The Embarrassment of Riches Quotes

“Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.”
― Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age

“The retaining membrane that held Dutch culture together for more than a century was a marvel of elasticity. Responding to appropriate external stimuli, it could expand or contract as the conditions of its survival altered. Under pressure, it could tighten to compress the Dutch into a sense of their indissoluble unity. In more expansive times it could relax and swell, allowing for internal differentiation and the absorption of a whole gamut of beliefs, faiths and even tongues. An omniscient kind of social filter swallowed up those foreign bodies and spat them out again as burghers: civically salubrious and residentially reliable.”
― Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age