Ana’s Reviews > The Bridge on the Drina > Status Update

'All that other men, other races, in other times and lands, had achieved and attained in the course of generations, through centuries of effort, at the cost of lives, of renunciations and of sacrifices greater and dearer than life, now lay before them as a chance inheritance and a dangerous gift of fate.'

'A moment later, the Emperor's man opened his eyes, let fall his hands, composed his face and once again resumed his usual appearance of confidence and serenity in which Viennese good-humour and Turkish courtesy met and mingled like two waters.'

'The sergeant-major only waved his hands, shrugged his shoulders, pursed his lips and closed his eyes, so that his whole face assumed a crafty and obsequious expression, unmoving, blind, deaf, such as men only achieve by long years of practice in old-fashioned and decaying administrations in which discretion has long degenerated into insensibility and obedience into cowardice.'

'Whenever a government feels the need of promising peace and prosperity to its citizens by means of a proclamation, it is time to be on guard and expect the opposite.'

'Perhaps she would have been one of those famous women of whom history tells and who have controlled the destinies of great families, of courts or states, always turning everything to good.'

'None the less, men left him with a feeling of comfort, neither calmed nor consoled, but touched and exalted by his firm and hopeless intransigence.'

'It is thus that those beings especially gifted by nature often provoke their destiny, boldly and thoughtlessly.'

'The air smelt of fresh melons and roasting coffee. From the great flagstones, still warm from the day's heat, and sprinkled with water, rose moist and scented the special smell of the kapia which filled men with freedom from care and evoked lively fancies.'

'Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.'