Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I'm to get to know myself and the world outside. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.
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Each bird must sing with his own throat.
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HELMER; But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties? NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty? HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn't it your duty to your husband and children? NORA:I have another duty, just as sacred. HELMER: You can't have. What duty do you mean? NORA: My duty to myself.
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The devil is compromise.
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A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
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It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.
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The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
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There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.
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Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
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When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.
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It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
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Mrs LINDE: When you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it second time.
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It's a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.
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Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.
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Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
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I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.
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What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.
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The strong must learn to be lonely.
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Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical.
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But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.
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And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!
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Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
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Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.
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Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.