Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake—and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”

It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect—it’s only a payment which he’s earned.

He walked briskly, in a Morse code pattern of short dashes and brief stops,

I’m going to protect him against you. I’ll put you in your place. I’m Mrs. Taggart. I’m the woman in this family now.” “That’s quite all right,” said Dagny. “I’m the man.”

it was not the girl in gray that I had to possess, but the woman who ran a railroad.

of whom he was fiercely, painfully proud,

Only I think that it’s a sin to sit down and let your life go, without making a try for it.”

The work seemed an end in itself, as if the motions of filling a coffee pot, squeezing oranges, slicing bread were performed for their own sake, for the sort of pleasure one expects, but seldom finds, in the motions of dancing.

that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo.”

She had no other writing instrument, so she took the lipstick from her bag and, smiling up at the marble face of the man who would have understood, she drew a large sign of the dollar on the pedestal under his feet.