Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.
Interpretation
Music serves as a healing force that allows us to forget our troubles and focus on what we cherish most.
In this quote, Ivo Andric highlights the therapeutic power of music, suggesting that forgetfulness can be a remedy for life's hardships. He emphasizes that through song, individuals are able to immerse themselves in feelings of love and joy, enabling them to escape from pain and find solace in the beauty of their emotions.
In practice
During a speech about overcoming difficulties, one might quote Andric to emphasize the therapeutic effect of music.
Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.
It seems to me, that if people only knew how hard it was for me to endure life, they would find it easier to forgive me for all the wrong things Iβve done and all the good things that I have failed to do. And they would still find a little compassion within them to pity me.
To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
That wild beast which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free.
Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.
Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.
Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
As a young man, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn't feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that. For those two hours, it made me feel like I belonged to something really good.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair...New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling... I do believe that painting can change the world.
What has happened to architecture since the second world war that the only passers-by who can contemplate it without pain are those equipped with a white stick and a dog?
At the end of the day it's got to be a good movie, it's got to be a funny movie, and it's got to make people think, 'Hey, I couldn't have spent my time any better.'
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