Atlas Shrugged

"What is morality?" she asked.

"Judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. But where does one find it?"

I’m going to have you at the price of more than myself: at the price of my self esteem—and I want you to know it.

Their work was done. For the moment, there was no future. They had earned the present.

“I have not said you needed it. But of all those whom you are saving from the storm tonight, I am the only one who will offer it.”

She liked his face—its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people’s faces.

But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren’t. He knew that they weren’t.

He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quotation, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest.

I keep thinking of what they told us in school about the sun losing energy, growing colder each year. I remember wondering, then, what it would be like in the last days of the world. I think it would be ... like this. Growing colder and things stopping

was the hurry of me

who knew where they were going and were eager to get there