Yes, I confess to be a marker. Of favorite lines in awesome novels, often on a subway train. These are them mentioned, from Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. I believe it to be an A paper, not a political statement. Read it and we’ll talk. Decide for yourself.
Quotes in reverse order of story. So, back to front:
i wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance that any charitable endeavor.
the most dreadful butchers were the most sincere.
she knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
what you think you’ve lost can neither be lost nor found. don’t let it go.
there is a beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence.
anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.
he thought, it is right that i should be the last to learn what i have said.
a leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.
if you stick to the end – you won’t need me any longer.
the pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. he thought – while his hand moved rapidly – what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. he thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.
happy men are free men.
nature allows no vacuum.
personal luxury is a limited endeavor.
i worked because it was a problem i wanted to solve.
words must be permitted to negotiate with reason.
a typewriter, he thought, presupposes the hand that punches its keys.
she turned her face to him. he saw her answer. he said:
i want it to be a palace – only i don’t think palaces are very luxurious. they’re so big so promiscuously public. a small house is the true luxury.
we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form.
he had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. if you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto – or the last movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. let me see that in one single act of man on earth. let me see it made real. let me see the answer to that promise of music. not servants nor those served; not altars or immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because i need it. don’t work for my happiness, my brothers – show me yours – show me that it is possible – show me your achievement – and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
to say ‘i love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘i’.
the human spirit as the creator and the conquerer of the ideal.
there’s no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes.
they were empty molds. but man had come so far; he could go farther. the city on the edge of the sky held a question – and a promise.
young people think that you forget what happens on the way when you get there.
my whole life. you know, like quicksand. smooth and natural.
like a wave through a half-liquid pool of mercury.
strings leading to everything else.
it was less than he wanted and more than he could expect.
crown prince without portfolio.
choose the builder of your home as carefully as you choose the bride to inhabit it.
i don’t intend to build in order to have clients. i intend to have clients in order to build.
rules? said roark. here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. no two materials are alike. no two sites on earth are alike. no two buildings have the same purpose. the purpose, the site, the material determine the shape.
yes. my dear fellow. who will let you? that’s not the point. the point is, who will stop me?
