All 30 Uses of

cease
in
Atlas Shrugged

He knew that he should think of Lillian and find the answer to the riddle of her character, because this was a revelation which he could not ignore; but he did not think of her-and he felt the dread because he knew that the answer had ceased to matter to him long ago.†
Chpt 1.6

ceased = stopped or discontinued

I wondered, once in a while, whether he had been right......It has ceased to disturb me, long ago.†
Chpt 1.7 *

Within a few weeks, it was over; the blinding stabs of hatred ceased and did not return.†
Chpt 1.8

When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men.†
Chpt 2.2

ceases = stops or discontinues

Before the steel cage had ceased trembling at the sill of the ground floor, Francisco was out, racing to meet the sound of the call for help.†
Chpt 2.3

ceased = stopped or discontinued

He saw the look of a peculiar panic growing in her eyes: it was not the look of understanding, but of a ferocious refusal to understand-as if she wanted to turn the violence of her emotion into a fog screen, as if she hoped, not that it would blind her to reality, but that her blindness would make reality cease to exist.†
Chpt 2.5

cease = stop or discontinue

It was this shape that the screams were now tearing away from him; he felt as if the ringing ceased to be sounds and became a succession of slashes hitting his skull.†
Chpt 2.8

ceased = stopped or discontinued

But if any of its trustees or receivers should remind me that I am now legally forbidden to cease being a janitor, I will 'quit.†
Chpt 2.9

cease = stop or discontinue

I did not give it up-it has ceased to exist.†
Chpt 3.1

ceased = stopped or discontinued

But I am still working in the profession I had chosen, which was that of serving the cause of justice....No, justice has not ceased to exist.†
Chpt 3.1

We have ceased burdening the weak with our ambition and have left them free to prosper without us.†
Chpt 3.1

But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy-so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving the happiness of the recipients.†
Chpt 3.2

cease = stop or discontinue

You know that we both understand all that has to be said, and we'll speak of it, but not until it has ceased to hurt you quite so much.†
Chpt 3.3

ceased = stopped or discontinued

He realized that the awe, the admiration, the eager curiosity he had expected, belonged to the face of the little shop girl who had ceased to exist.†
Chpt 3.4

She felt free to act, not by rules, but at her own pleasure, with sudden confidence that the rules had fused into a natural habit-she knew that she was attracting attention, but now, for the first time, it was not the attention of ridicule, but of admiration-she was sought after, on her own merit, she was Mrs. Taggart, she had ceased being an object of charity weighing Jim down, painfully tolerated for his sake-she was laughing gaily and seeing the smiles of response, of appreciation on the faces around her-and she kept glancing at him across the room, radiantly, like a child handing him a report card with a perfect score, begging him to be proud of her.†
Chpt 3.4

Reports from the various banks indicate that there are no d'Anconia accounts left anywhere; the money has been spent down to the last penny, "Ladies and gentlemen, the d'Anconia fortune-the greatest fortune on earth, the legendary fortune of the centuries-has ceased to exist.†
Chpt 3.5

ceased = stopped or discontinued

If those men had vanished, if that world was gone, if his mills had ceased to serve his values-then the mills were only a pile of dead scrap, to be left to crumble, the sooner the better-to be left, not as an act of treason, but as an act of loyalty to their actual meaning.†
Chpt 3.6

He knew that the meaning of his mills had ceased to exist, and the fullness of the knowledge left no room for the pain of regretting an illusion.†
Chpt 3.6

It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying.†
Chpt 3.7

Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist.†
Chpt 3.7

cease = stop or discontinue

You owe your love to 'those who don't deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them-the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love-the more unfastidious your love, the greater your virtue-and if you can bring your soul to the state of a dump heap that welcomes anything on equal terms, if you can cease to value moral values, you have achieved the state of moral perfection.†
Chpt 3.7

'The public,' to you, is whoever has failed to achieve any virtue or value; whoever achieves it, whoever provides the goods you require for survival, ceases to be regarded as part of the public or as part of the human race.†
Chpt 3.7

ceases = stops or discontinues

Then, abruptly, it ceased to matter; she felt a peculiar shock, like the shock of sudden silence, a sense of stillness within her, which she took for a sense of calm: she saw the number "367" above the door of an ancient tenement.†
Chpt 3.8

ceased = stopped or discontinued

Then they realized that the drone of the motor had ceased, too, and that the red light had gone out on the control panel: the current had stopped; the generator was dead.†
Chpt 3.9

Definitions:

(1) (cease)
to stop or discontinue
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Note that the expression, cease fire means to stop doing battle such as firing funs at each other. Similarly, the noun, cease-fire, is a state of having stopped doing battle.