The Bridge On The Drina Quotes
"It is always an invidious task for a translator to comment on an author's style."
"The Serbian Tsar Stefan drank wine in fertile Prizren."
"For us this work means extermination and nothing less."
"The days are short. Always shorter. You sons of bitches, you are eating your bread for nothing!"
"Guard him, guard him well! You bastards, if you let him go, not a single one of you will keep his head on his shoulders."
"He began to interrogate the bound peasant, but soon left off doing that also."
"Men who do not work themselves and who undertake nothing in their lives easily lose patience and fall into error when judging the work of others."
"Nothing brings men closer together than a common misfortune happily overcome."
"The force of the elements and the weight of common misfortune brought all these men together and bridged, at least for this one evening, the gulf that divided one faith from the other."
"Desperate men make desperate efforts to appear calm and indifferent, almost casual."
"Man must persevere in this struggle, even if it were completely in vain."
"For all of us die only once, whereas great men die twice, once when they leave this world and a second time when their lifework disappears."
"That generation spent the rest of its life in repairing the damage and the misfortune left by the 'great flood'."
"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."
"Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves."
"Life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'."
"There is no rule without revolts and conspiracies, even as there is no property without work and worry."
"Hope, a senseless hope, that great asset of the downtrodden."
"Those who are downtrodden and exploited make equal use of their reason and unreason."
"The nights were filled with prudent and passionate whisperings in which pulsed invisible waves of the most daring dreams and wishes."
"All these pass over it, even as the unquiet waters pass beneath its smooth and perfect arches."
"Real life consists of calm periods and that it would be mad and vain to spoil them by looking for some other, firmer and more lasting life that did not exist."
"The world was great, the world was limitless."
"It is often such men who are first caught up in the whirlpool of great events and whom this whirlpool irresistibly attracts and sucks down."
"Only in fever could such repulsive and terrible sights be seen."
"A foreign tsar had put his hand on them and a foreign faith ruled."
"All that breathes or creeps or speaks with human voice down there is either your or my responsibility."
"They lived, worked and amused themselves in the old way."
"Men quickly become accustomed to cleanliness even when it forms no part of their needs or habits."
"The misfortune of unlucky men lies in just this, that those things which for them are impossible and forbidden become in a moment easy and attainable."
"And in each of those very ordinary words was the hidden joy that she would soon see him again."
"Her eyes, made larger by the shadows of early dusk, now gazed boldly and openly into the young man's as if they could not look away from him."
"A whole hour passed thus, waiting, and the half of another, and still the girl did not return."
"His eagerness rose with the falling darkness."
"At last, instead of the girl, his relief came."
"It could be seen from all these signs that something unusual was afoot."
"It seemed to the young man as if all the magical and inextricable responsibilities that he had felt in his dreams were falling on his shoulders."
"His entrails were crying out from hunger and he himself was trembling all over from emotion."
"He allowed no one else to be silent or at peace."
"In bearing and appearance he no longer seemed like a man, but like duty embodied."
"It was the end of one who has deceived himself and allowed others to deceive him."
"Around him grew that circle of loneliness and deep silence which is always formed around a man whom ill fortune has struck."
"The memory of that sensitive and unlucky youth lasted far longer than the guard on the kapia."
"Life in the town beside the bridge became more and more animated."
"Something of that lull could be felt even in these remote districts."
"Such were those three decades of relative prosperity and apparent peace."
"Everything else was flushed away into that dark background of consciousness where live and ferment the basic feelings and indestructible beliefs."
"The new state, with its good administrative apparatus, had succeeded in a painless manner, without brutality or commotion, to extract taxes and contributions."
"Like fresh blood, money began to circulate in hitherto unknown quantities."
"There were not many more real pleasures nor, certainly, more happiness but it was undoubtedly easier to come by such pleasures."
"The cruel could mock at them or beat them, the cowards could shout insults at them."
"They were an eternal but unrecognized need of the townsmen whose spiritual lives were stunted and deformed."
"In that unusual and dangerous position, exalted above all the others, he was no longer Ćorkan the One-Eyed, the butt of the town and the inn."
"He felt as if a gay strength flowed through his body which danced to an unheard music and that gave him security and balance."
"He leapt down and looked confusedly about him, in wonder that he had once again landed on the hard and familiar Višegrad road."
"In this general uproar and commotion someone proposed that they stay together and not go home, but go on drinking in honour of Ćorkan's exploit."
"Each day and month, taken by itself, seemed uncertain and temporary, but all of them taken together constituted the longest period of peace and material progress."
"Thanks be to God, even my Ferhat has become an official."
"The last years of the nineteenth century, years without upheavals or important events, flowed past like a broad calm river."
"Human life was so ordered that for every dram of good there were two drams of evil."
"Beside each famous person, alongside their glory, was also their executioner waiting for his chance."
"But the engineers inspected it, measured it and took notes; then they went away and the matter was forgotten."
"All this earth of God's was built upon a word."
"Every bridge, from a tree trunk crossing a mountain stream to this great erection, has its guardian angel."
"The supreme conception of the equality of all before the law, the participation in the making of laws and the administration of the country, an equal protection afforded to all faiths, languages and national characteristics."
"But human needs had altered and world conditions changed; now its task had betrayed it."
"In those summer days of 1913 all was still undetermined, unsure."
"Life stood before them as an object, as a field of action for their liberated senses, for their intellectual curiosity and their sentimental exploits, which knew no limits."
"It seemed fantastic and improbable but was none the less true; they could do with their youth what they liked, and give their judgments freely and without restriction."
"That was a generation of rebel angels, in that short moment while they still had all the power and all the rights of angels and also the flaming pride of rebels."
"It is hard to imagine a more dangerous manner of entering into life or a surer way towards exceptional deeds or total disaster."
"If the realization of nationalist aims brings with it the creation of social justice, then in the Western European states...there should no longer be any major social problems, or movements, or conflicts. Yet we see that that is not so."
"Politics come first...The stomach comes first."
"The true studies for you are law and economics, for you are men of practical knowledge."
"There cannot be any doubt any longer. We are destined to realize all that the generations before us have aspired to."
"For life, real life, I look at from very close indeed; I see its influence on others and I feel it on myself."
"Man is tormented all his life and never has what he needs, let alone what he wants."
"Nothing is really important to you and, in fact, you neither love nor hate, for to do either you must at least for a moment stand outside yourself."
"You submit everything to your vanity but you are yourself the first of its slaves and its greatest martyr."
"You are not even envious, not from goodness but from boundless egoism, for you do not notice the happiness or unhappiness of others."
"Then you will remain alone in the wilderness you have yourself created, face to face with your vanity and you will have nothing to offer it."
"You desire nothing and you find joy in nothing."
"Everything is hard and complicated, expensive and accompanied by disproportionately high risk; there is no trace either of bold hopes or of wide horizons."
"All your theories, all your many spiritual occupations, like your loves and your friendships, all these derive from your ambition, and that ambition is false and unhealthy for it derives from your vanity, only and exclusively from your vanity."
"Silence is for prayer; it is itself like a prayer."
"If God had abandoned this unlucky town on the Drina, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies?"
"It seemed to him that the bridge had been mined and thought of that continually, asking himself whether one such shell could ignite the explosives should it penetrate to the charge."
"He could not have said even approximately how long he lay there."
"It might all have seemed like some extended festival visit to the villages, had it not been for Lotte's despairing scream."
"In those summer days, on that little piece of earth between the Drina and the dry frontier, in the town, villages, on the roads and in the forests, everywhere men sought death, their own or others', and at the same time fled from it and defended themselves from it by all the means in their power."
"It was not enough to turn one's back on a thing for it to cease to goad and torment one."
"He had endured this hard life and, when he was eighteen, had gone into the shop 'on salary'."
"There had not been such a calm since the opening of hostilities, the hodja thought joyously, and silence is sweet and good; with it returned, at least for a moment, a little of that real human life which had recently grown weaker and weaker and which, under the thunder of the infidel guns, had completely disappeared."
"Even when he shut his eyes he could still see it."