Quote by Ivo Andrić: “Beauty can't make us happy; it can only give us a moment of joy.”

Andrić offers a nuanced view of beauty's role in our lives, distinguishing between fleeting pleasure and lasting happiness. He suggests that while encountering beauty can provide temporary delight, true contentment requires more profound engagement with life than mere aesthetic appreciation.

While specific source is hard to pinpoint, this reflects the deeper philosophical leanings often found in his essays and Nobel acceptance speech (1961), which explored the complex relationship between art, life, and human experience beyond superficiality.

Bosnian-Yugoslav novelist and diplomat who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961, the only author from the former Yugoslavia to do so. His novel The Bridge on the Drina is an epic spanning four centuries of life in Bosnia. His work explored the long history of conflict and coexistence between the peoples of the Balkans.