It's strange. There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?
Ayn RandPeople said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.
Ayn RandMy greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that โdoesnโt count,โ i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational โ not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn RandThrough the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.
Ayn Rand