The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

The gentleman was not bowing to the ground, he was not unrolling a carpet, he was not waving a fan over her head; he was only holding the door for her. It merely seemed to Keating that the gentleman was doing all of that.

The less the prestige of his name, the more arrogant the sound of his voice pronouncing it.

The voice said: “I should like to work for you.” The tone of the voice said: “I’m going to work for you.”

And Keating thought suddenly that Francon did not really believe it and knew that Keating did not believe it, and yet they were both contented, bound tighter together by a common method and a common guilt.

Readers acquired erudition without study, authority without cost, judgment without effort.

he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand it.

No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain.”

one feel gratitude for gratitude? It’s a little hard to express,

it brought laughs, it was amusing; it was an indecent joke, acted out not on the stage but in the audience.

If you want something to grow, you don’t nurture each seed separately. You just spread a certain fertilizer. Nature will do the rest.

did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters.