Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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In the decisive moment I won the victory over myself. I chose to live. And believe me, it takes courage to choose life under those circumstances.
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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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Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing.
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Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.
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The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.
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A friend married is a friend lost.
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A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
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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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Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
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An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.
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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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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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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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But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.
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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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I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
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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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So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
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It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.
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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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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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I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
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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.