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Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.
Henrik Ibsen
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Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
Henrik Ibsen
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...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.
Henrik Ibsen
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Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.
Henrik Ibsen
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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.
Henrik Ibsen
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A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney.
Henrik Ibsen
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This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!
Henrik Ibsen
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It is no use lying to one's self.
Henrik Ibsen
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Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.
Henrik Ibsen
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Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.
Henrik Ibsen
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I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.
Henrik Ibsen
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What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
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Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!
Henrik Ibsen
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If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
Henrik Ibsen
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The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit.
Henrik Ibsen
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I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.
Henrik Ibsen
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Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.
Henrik Ibsen
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The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.
Henrik Ibsen
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It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
Henrik Ibsen
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There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.
Henrik Ibsen
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Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.
Henrik Ibsen
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Oh, life would be all right if we didn't have to put up with these damned creditors who keep pestering us with the demands of their ideals.
Henrik Ibsen
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There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart.
Henrik Ibsen
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To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.
Henrik Ibsen
