Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ayn Rand

Quote by Ayn Rand

“One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness.”

Quote by Ayn Rand

Work

The Romantic Manifesto

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand

American novelist and philosopher, known for her novels and philosophical ideas. Her works emphasize individualism, free markets, and rationalism, and have had a profound impact on politics and philosophy in the late 20th century. more

You May Also Like

“Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, particularly in the realm of art. The model of the great man stimulates vainer natures to imitate him outwardly or to surpass him; in addition, all great talents have the fateful quality of stifling many weaker forces and needs, and seem to devastate the nature around them. The most fortunate instance in the development of art is when several geniuses reciprocally keep each other in check; in this kind of a struggle, weaker and gentle natures are generally also allowed air and light.”

“I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don’t mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don’t want to be clever or great or “significant” or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain. The essences. Not the things themselves. Swimmings of light on the smallest things. Or am I being sentimental? Depressed. I’m so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.”