Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
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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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Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing.
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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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Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.
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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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A friend married is a friend lost.
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Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
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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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The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.
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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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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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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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In great memories there lies the seed of growth.
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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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...every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.
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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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An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.
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I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.
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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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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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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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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.