Quotes By Author: Ivo Andrić

“… but in the depths of their hearts, in that true and ultimate depth which is revealed to no one, there remained the memory of what had taken place and the consciousness that was has once been can be again; there remained too hope, a seneless hope, that great asset of the downtrodden. For those who rule and must oppress in order to rule must work according to reason; and if, carried away by their passions or driven by an adversary, they go beyond the limits of reasonable action, they start down the slippery slope and thereby reveal the commencement of their own downfall. Whereas those who are downtrodden and exploited make equal use of their reason and unreason for they are but two different kinds of arms in the continual struggle, now underground, now open, against the oppressor.”

“Every man in the town set to work at once to repair the damage and no one had time to think of the meaning of the victory of the bridge, but going about his affairs in that ill-fated town in which the waters had destroyed or at least damaged everything, he knew that there was something in his life that overcame every disaster and that the bridge, because of the strange harmony of its forms and the strong and invisible power of its foundations, would emerge from every test unchanged and imperishable.”