Roark smiled, "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.

Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

It's because...you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met--yours and mine--they'd fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd see that they had the same root.

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.