# Quote — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

> "Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. Will you tell me why, when it comes to a building, you don't want it to look as if it had any sense or purpose, you want to choke it with trimmings, you want to sacrifice its purpose to its envelope—not knowing even why you want that kind of an envelope? You want it to look like a hybrid beast produced by crossing the bastards of ten different species until you get a creature without guts, without heart or brain, a creature all pelt, tail, claws and feathers? Why? You must tell me, because I’ve never been able to understand it."

- Author: [Ayn Rand](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand.md)
- Book: [The Fountainhead](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead.md)
- Page: 171
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Part_I_(_Peter_Keating_)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead/now-take-a-human

## More from this book

> "As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egoism and altruism. Egoism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. […] Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative."

p. 739 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead/as-poles-of-good.md)

> The first movement of Roark's head was not to look at the city in the window, at the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand. Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the courtroom.

p. 744 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead/the-first-movement.md)

> The line of the ocean cut the sky. The ocean mounted as the city descended. She passed the pinnacles of bank buildings. She passed the crowns of courthouses. She rose above the spires of churches.
>
> Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.

p. 754 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead/the-line-of-the.md)