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She found a dark satisfaction in pain—because that pain came from him.

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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 poin...more

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The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, hone...more

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..each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wonder...more

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She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary.

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The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

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Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all t...more

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While a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistak...more

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I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother.

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Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

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Well, whose opinion did you take?”“I don’t ask for opinions.”“What do you go by?”“Judgment.”“Well, whose judgment did you take?”“Mine.”“But whom did y...more

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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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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