Ayn Rand 的「The Fountainhead」
我覺得這本書寫的比「Atlas shrugged」好，不那麼冗長，連續幾個晚上讀到眼睛都要闔起才放下。反面角色的場景和對話比起「Atlas shrugged」來說鮮明且細微得多了。
主角Howard Roark超人到不行，我不知道這個世界上是否曾有他那樣的人存在。有才能毅力的人自然是有的，但能保持calm到他那樣的程度，可能只有作者心中的ideal man了。沒有get angry or feel betrayed我還能了解，因為雖然掛名的建築師不是他，他是為了自己而設計。但能不despair真的是非常不容易，如果沒有機會讓自己的才能得以發揮，讓自己設計的建築被蓋出來，那種痛苦應是更深吧。
Sometimes, not often, he sat up and did not move for a long time; then he smiled, the slow smile of an executioner watching a victim. He thought of his days going by, of the buildings he could have been doing, should have been doing and, perhaps, never would be doing again. He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: that he had to drill through granite, that he had to drive a wedge and blast the thing within him which persisted in calling to his pity. p205
"Until you stop hating all this, stop being afraid of it, learn not to notice it." p483It is not in the nature of man - nor of any living entity - to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consisits of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature - and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning - and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.
- AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION to the 1968 Edition
ONE KEY TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL INVESTMENT portfolio is to eliminate the risk you can control and reduce the risk you can't.
One key to living life with a passion and a purpose is to say yes to personl risks you can control and embrace the risks you can't.
- The New Coffeehouse Investor p.19
Pitching a tent in a snowstorm with the wind blowing at sixty miles per hour is a lot like life: Sometimes you have to make a conscious decision to have fun, because if you don't, it quickly becomes the most miserable experience of your life.
- The New Coffeehouse Investor p.81