There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.
I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.
Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.
The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude – a gray spread of cotton that deemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way.
We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts, and reality to values.
I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values.
You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.
She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her... She took it as a regrettable accident, to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull.
Victor Hugo: “If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.
You’re so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God’s part that there’s one person who matches inside and out.
When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another – except brute, physical force.
Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing.
Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies... It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
Listen, here’s something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes – and, you know, it’s the same moon everywhere – and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see?
You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes.
It’s easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence – such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness – to value the failure of your values – is an insolent negation of morality.
She thought that they had not greeted each other and that it was right. This was not a reunion, but just one moment out of something that had never been interrupted. She thought how strange it would be if she ever said “Hello” to him; one did not greet oneself each morning.
Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.
Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said: “There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers.” But we cannot change our bones nor our body.