Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?.

“No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths. The very day the ships have made a brave show in the games, they are engulfed.”

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

“However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.”

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

“If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.”

“Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you've outdone your own self? Set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to, and say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them.”

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.

Ayn Rand

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Ayn Rand

I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.

Ayn Rand

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Ayn Rand

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

Ayn Rand

If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.

Ayn Rand

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

Ayn Rand

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.

Ayn Rand

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

Ayn Rand

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

Ayn Rand