Bridges

In everything that man pushes by his vital instinct, builds and raises, nothing is more beautiful or more precious than bridges. Bridges are more important than houses, more sacred because they are more useful than temples.

They belong to everybody and they are the same for everybody, always built in the right place in which the major part of human necessity crosses, more durable than all other constructions and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.

In the end, everything through which this life of ours is expressed—thoughts, efforts, glances, smiles, words, sighs—is all reaching out to another shore, as towards its aim, and only there will it be granted its true meaning.

Everywhere there is something to overcome or to bridge: disorder, death, meaninglessness. Everything is a transition, a bridge whose ends are lost in infinity, beside which all the bridges of this earth are only children’s toys, pale symbols. And all our hope lies on the other side.

Source: Ivo Andrić , The Bridges (Short Story), 1963.