Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

Mrs. Sanborn was the president of many charity organizations and this had given her an addiction to autocracy such as no other avocation could develop.

To say ’I love you’ one must know first how to say the ’I.’

He stared into the fire. That was what made a man happy--to sit looking dreamily into a fire, at his own hearth, in his own home; that’s what he had always heard and read. He stared at the flames, unblinking, to force himself into a complete obedience to an established truth. Just one more minute of it and I will feel happy, he thought, concentrating. Nothing happened. He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment.

As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.”

-all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a blessing it was to be taken out of themselves.