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They scattered with no melody, no harmony, no rhythm to hold them. If music was emotion and emotion came from thought, then this was the scream of cha...more

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No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

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The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, ...more

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Señor d.‘Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”“Just exactly what it deserves.”“Oh, how cruel!”“Don’t you believe in the operati...more

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It seemed natural; natural to the moment’s peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, immediate, but disconnected, like a b...more

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It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickl...more

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Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and w...more

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They said you were hard and cold and unfeeling.”“But it’s true...I am, in the sense they mean—only have they ever told you in just what sense they mea...more

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Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's w...more

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...there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s th...more

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Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choi...more

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In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to k...more

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Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are ...more

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...they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us.

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If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only fo...more