senorjosh.com: the fountainhead

She stood drawn up. Her stout little body was corseted so tightly under the starched folds of her cotton dress that it seemed to squeeze the fat out to her wrists and ankles. (18)

Men hate passion, any great passion. (45)

He was frankly masculine, frankly unconcerned about elegance, and frankly conscious of the effect. (100)

The guests stood about, self-consciously informal, working at being brilliant. (115)

Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely. (117)

But when Roark looked at him with approval, when Roark smiled, when Roark praised one of his articles, Heller felt the strangely clean joy of a sanction that was neither a bribe nor alms. (135)

You know, it's such a peculiar thing -- our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, bug and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. (143)

One did not stress total ignorance of a subject if one were in total ignorance of it. (237)

Some day you'll know the truth about yourself too, Peter, and it will be worse for you than for most of us. But you don't have to think about it. It won't come for a long time.
You did want me, Dominique?(250)

And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men -- less, perhaps -- none of this would have been possible. And that might be true. If so, there are -- again -- two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that but the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights -- if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your own creative capacities. (281)

Keating listened in thick contentment. (292)

Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.
But I don't think of you. (389)

People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. (426)

Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it -- the total passion of the total height -- you're incapable of anything less. (445)

You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict -- and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. (452)

She saw no apology, no regret, no resentment as he looked at her. It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence. (489)

--and there had always been a God and a Devil -- only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil -- he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small. (492)

a ferocious cry of admiration and anger.(512)

You're not thinking of me. I can't help you. I'm not the person you're afraid of just now.
     Who is?
     Yourself.
     Who gave you the right to say all this?
     You did.
     Well, go on. (526)

Roark knew that Wynand seldom spoke of his childhood, by the quality of his words; they were bright and hesitant, untarnished by usage…(529)

What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word -- 'Yes.' The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that 'Yes' is more than an answer to one thing, it's a kind of 'Amen' to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created t, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say 'Yes' or "No' is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function -- the act of valuing. 'Yes' or 'No,' 'I wish' or 'I do not wish.' You can't say 'Yes' without saying 'I.' (538)

I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. (539)

Then he discovered how strange it was when one lost the knack of eating automatically and had to do it by full conscious effort.(598)

Katie, why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world -- to do what we want. And it takes the greatest courage. I mean, when we really want… because it's such a big responsibility, really to want something. (598)

The thing that is destroying the world. The thing you were talking about. Actual selflessness. (604)

Bring them to a state where saying 'I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They'll need you. They'll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man's soul -- and the space is yours to fill. (636)

All that which proceeds from a man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon man is evil. The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. (681)