Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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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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Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.
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The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.
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To live is to war with trolls.
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Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
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Don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
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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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Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.
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To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.
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Nobody can put a character on paper without - at any rate in part and at times - sitting as a model for it himself.
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The majority never has right on its side.
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The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.
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In great memories there lies the seed of growth.
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The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
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Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
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Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
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It's such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string — when one slips off, all the rest follow.
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To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.
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I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
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Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.
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You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
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Oh, yes--you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side--unfortunately; but right it has not.
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The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.
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An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.