Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?
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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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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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Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.
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Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.
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The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.
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Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
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The younger generation will come knocking at my door.
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A friend married is a friend lost.
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In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That's a thought I'll never endure! Never.
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Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.
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But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.
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In great memories there lies the seed of growth.
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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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A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.
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I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.
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Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrafice his honor for the one he loves. Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
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I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.
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It is not for a care-free existence I am fighting, but for the possibility of devoting myself to the task which I believe and know has been laid upon me by God -- the work which seems to me more important and needful in Norway than any other, that of arousing the nation and leading it to think great thoughts.
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If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.
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I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
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I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
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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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One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.