Zlatko

“The child watched its disappearance--he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance--we know not what--in which the poor little soul weighs God.

Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint”
― Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs

“Individualität!... Ach, was man ist, kann und hat, scheint arm, grau,
unzulänglich und langweilig; was man aber nicht ist, nicht kann und
nicht hat, das eben ist es, worauf man mit jenem sehnsüchtigen Neide
blickt, der zur Liebe wird, weil er sich fürchtet, zum Haß zu werden.
(Serbian translation)
Individualnost!...Ah,sve sto jesmo,sto umemo i imamo,izgleda jadno,sivo,nedovoljno i dosadno;a ono pak sto nismo,ne umemo i nemamo,to je bas ono na sta svak gleda sa onom ceznjivom zaviscu koja biva ljubav,zato se plasi da bude mrznja.
II tom,deseti deo,224 strana”
― Thomas Mann

“Cowperwood, who saw things in the large, could scarcely endure this minutae. He was but little
interested in the affairs of bygone men and women, being so intensely engaged with the living present.
And after a time he slipped outside, preferring the wide sweep of gardens, with their flower-lined
walks and views of the cathedral. Its arches and towers and stained-glass windows, this whole
carefully executed shrine, still held glamor, but all because of the hands and brains, aspirations and
dreams of selfish and self-preserving creatures like himself. And so many of these, as he now mused,
walking about, had warred over possession of this church. And now they were within its walls,
graced and made respectable, the noble dead! Was any man noble? Had there ever been such a thing
as an indubitably noble soul? He was scarcely prepared to believe it. Men killed to live—all of them
—and wallowed in lust in order to reproduce themselves. In fact, wars, vanities, pretenses, cruelties,
greeds, lusts, murder, spelled their true history, with only the weak running to a mythical saviour or
god for aid. And the strong using this belief in a god to further the conquest of the weak. And by such
temples or shrines as this. He looked, meditated, and was somehow touched with the futility of so”
― Theodore Dreiser

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.”
― Edith Wharton