emory wolfe > emory's Quotes

“If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.”
― Anne Tyler

“If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time cease to react at all.”
― Yogi Bhajan

“I think,” said Dominique firmly, “that he is the most revolting person I’ve ever met.” “Oh, now, really?” “Do you care for that sort of unbridled arrogance? I don’t know what one could say for him, unless it’s that he’s terribly good-looking, if that matters.” “Good-looking? Are you being funny, Dominique?” Kiki Holcombe saw Dominique being stupidly puzzled for once. And Dominique realized that what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her, was not seen by others; that it could leave them indifferent; that what she had thought to be the most obvious, inconsequential remark was, instead, a confession of something within her, some quality not shared by others.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep—all ordered society puts the passions to sleep—and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion, model against model.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“We think too fast, even while walking or on the way, or while engaged in other things, no matter how serious the subject.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“It’s so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said: “You’re a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work, what I am or why I’m here. You’re too good for that. But if you want to know it—I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because your figures are not what men are, but what men could be—and should be. Because you’ve gone beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being. Because your figures are the heroic in man. And so I didn’t come here to do you a favor or because I felt sorry for you or because you need a job pretty badly. I came for a simple, selfish reason—the same reason that makes a man choose the cleanest food he can find. It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?—to seek the best. I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine.” Mallory”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“That doesn’t matter. Not even that they’ll destroy it. Only that it had existed.” She”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“All growth demands destruction.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” “But I don’t think of you.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
― David Foster Wallace, Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Stop ruining love by wanting it so bad.”
― Derrick Brown

“I can not love you until you can love our beautiful waitress in the simple way that I do.”
― Derrick C. Brown, Scandalabra

“Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.”
― Charles Bukowski

“A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.”
― Socrates, Apology

“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Dominique came to Roark’s room on the evening when Stoddard announced his lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation. “You’re wrong,” he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. “I don’t feel that.” “I don’t want to know.” “I want you to know. What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t believe it matters to me—that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. 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 point, it’s not really pain. You mustn’t look like that.” “Where does it stop?” “Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.” “You shouldn’t have built it. You shouldn’t have delivered it to the sort of thing they’re doing.” “That doesn’t matter. Not even that they’ll destroy it. Only that it had existed.” She”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“Wynand asked: “Howard, have you ever been in love?” Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly: “I still am.” “But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?” “Much greater, Gail.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Love — Love forgives the lover even his lust. 63”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Why, no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.” “Yes. You are. But egotists are not kind. And you are. You’re the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense.” “Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean. But let’s drop that now. If you’ve got to talk of something, let’s talk of what we’re going to do.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs