Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.

Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the 'luck' has to be helped along and provided by someone.

Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values.

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.