If the painting was real, so was the atrocity of his father’s looting.

Look at this stupendous achievement. Pay attention on your knees to greatness.

Now that one person in the world sees that it’s authentic, it’s all worthwhile, don’t you think?

Everybody works. That’s what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

It doesn’t matter what she’s looking at. Or what she’s doing, or not doing. It only matters that she’s thinking.

Johanna would leave the town of her birth and ancestry, and go to Amsterdam, nearly half a day’s carriage ride over the dike roads.

There is nothing so vital as paying attention, and perfecting the humble offices of love.

The Hague was, every Dutchman declared pridefully, the very capital of reason above passion.

Since Saskia couldn’t have [the things in the...