Quote of the day - Will Durant - The Renaissance

But it took more than a revival of antiquity to make the Renaissance.  And first of all it took money - smelly, bourgeois money: the profits of skillful managers and underpaid labor; of hazardous voyages to the East, and laborious crossings of the Alps, to buy goods cheap and sell them dear; of careful calculations, investments, and loans, of interest and dividends accumulated until enough surplus could be spared from the pleasures of the flesh, from the purchase of senates, signories, and mistresses, to pay a Michelangelo or a Titian to transmute wealth into beauty, and perfume a fortune with the breath of art.  Money is the root of all civilization. 

Will Durant, The Renaissance, (1953) pp. 67, 68