65 Henrik Ibsen Quotes

Henrik Ibsen quotes

1. Ikke tusend ord sig prenter, som en gernings spor.

2. Tabets alt din vinding skabte - Evigt ejes kun det tabte!

3. Peer, du lyver!

4. Om jeg hamrer eller hamres, ligefuldt sa skal der jamres!

5. Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

6. I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. You are very fond, sir, of talking about the consideration we owe to the community; it seems to me, however, that the community has its duties too. 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!

7. 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.

8. The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - these are the pillars of society.

9. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.

10. What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.

11. Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.

12. I've had the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

13. You don't get nothing for nothing in this life.

14. There is a big black hat and it makes you invisible. Have you heard of that hat? You put it on and then no one can see you.

15. The black, cold, icy water. Down and down, without end - if it would only end.

16. But our home's been nothing but a playpen. I've been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child. And in turn the children have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as they thought it fun when I played with them. That's been our marriage, Torvald.

17. If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

18. I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.

19. Helmer: First and foremost, you are a wife and mother. Nora: That I don't believe any more. I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as you are.

20. To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

21. I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

22. A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

23. The majority never has right on its side.

24. You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

25. Always do that, wild ducks do. They shoot to the bottom as deep as they can get, sir - and bite themselves fast in the tangle and seaweed - and all the devil's own mess that grows down there. And they never come up again.

26. 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.

27. Forget that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that good old native word: 'lies.'

28. Tar De livslognen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, sa tar De lykken fra ham med det samme.

29. Our common lust for life.

30. Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

31. Back he'll come...With vine leaves in his hair. Flushed and confident.

32. Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical.

33. The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

34. A forest bird never wants a cage.

35. Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too.

36. 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.

37. Neither moral concepts nor art forms can expect to live forever. How much are we obliged to hold on to? Who can guarantee that 2 plus 2 don't add up to 5 on Jupiter?

38. I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

39. It is inexcuseable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

40. 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.

41. The future cannot come, for when it comes it's already past.

42. The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

43. The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions - to destroy.

44. Tvertimot!

1. But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

2. The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?

3. When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.

4. Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

5. There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.

6. 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.

7. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

8. I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.

9. But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.

10. Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

11. What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?

12. The strong must learn to be lonely.

13. The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.

14. That is the accursed thing about small surroundings -- they make the soul small.

15. 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.

16. The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

17. I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!

18. The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

19. I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

20. The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

21. Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.