“It is not good to feel too much joy, nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.”
Anthem (1937)
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes
Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 208
Context: The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering... and I was reaping what I had not sown... None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white.
The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)
Palamon and Arcite.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)
Letter to Sisters at Saint Mary's, 1848.
“Let us never forget that if we wish to die like the Saints we must live like them.”
Letter to Sisters at Saint Mary's, 1848.
Context: Let us never forget that if we wish to die like the Saints we must live like them. Let us force ourselves to imitate their virtues, in particular humility and charity.
“Redeemers always reach the world too late.
God dies, we live; God lives, we die. Our fate.”
"A Tale of Two Pieties", in The Chair of Babel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) p. 51.
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
Variant: Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living out fears.