She thought how strange it would be if she ever said ‘Hello’ to him. One did not greet oneself each morning.
She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.
Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.
Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!
Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
But I don’t think of you. – Howard Roark.
In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.
They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation.
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.
But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.
The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They’re either vicious or tragic.
The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not ‘selflessness’ or ‘sacrifice,’ but integrity.