Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your emancipation. You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields - discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West - superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.
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Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.
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Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.
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What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.
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A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
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To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind.
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Don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
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If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.
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There is nothing so enervating and exhausting as this hopeless waiting. I dare say this is only a transition period. I will and shall have a victory some day. If the powers that be have shown me so little favor as to place me in this world and make me what I am, the result must be accordingly.
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Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea.... We are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
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I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
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One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
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People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it.
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The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.
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That is the accursed thing about small surroundings -- they make the soul small.
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A forest bird never wants a cage.
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I'm inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.
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You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.
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Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.
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Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.
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There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.
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The sea possesses a power over one's moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.
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Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.
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It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.