|
f1d5fda
|
I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me--not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love--not your answer. Not even your indifference.
|
|
love
gail-wynand
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
05c8b7a
|
I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands...--I want you like an animal...or a whore.
|
|
want
love
dominique-francon
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
3a5d049
|
I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
|
|
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
4bacd4f
|
I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.
|
|
work
the-fountainhead
incompetence
|
Ayn Rand |
|
21e5652
|
Great men can't be ruled... The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.
|
|
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
52a185b
|
They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull.
|
|
people
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
3f2f7c8
|
A man's spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
self
|
Ayn Rand |
|
0efc443
|
I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
2ce906b
|
The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone.
|
|
mind
the-fountainhead
individual
|
Ayn Rand |
|
178593d
|
You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God's part that there's one person who matches inside and out.
|
|
gail-wynand
dominique-francon
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
7253668
|
"...Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive--to be noticed, liked, admired?" "--by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance--the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought--they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it."
|
|
the-fountainhead
selfish
|
Ayn Rand |
|
1b854dd
|
Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them--because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man.
|
|
independence
the-fountainhead
independent
|
Ayn Rand |
|
ae46311
|
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.
|
|
gail-wynand
the-fountainhead
competence
|
Ayn Rand |
|
135a749
|
...the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
standards
|
Ayn Rand |
|
26733de
|
"I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom." "You call that freedom?" "To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."
|
|
independence
freedom
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
f35c547
|
She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance.
|
|
love
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
7755b07
|
When they lay in bed together it was--as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded--an act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial.
|
|
dominique-francon
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
1c6e329
|
I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
34fa147
|
I'm not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain.
|
|
pain
suffering
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
ca3adc4
|
He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion--prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.
|
|
joy
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
c2115c3
|
The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity.
|
|
the-fountainhead
complex
simple
|
Ayn Rand |
|
52c1a27
|
Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men.
|
|
happy
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
14d329c
|
...she had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |