Henrik Ibsen Quotes

Yes you may depend upon it he has the ability! He is the younger generation that stands ready to knock at my door - to make an end of Halvard Solness.
Henrik Ibsen
The sea possesses a power over one's moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.
Henrik Ibsen
Different people have different duties assigned to 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.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest man is the one who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
A minority may be right and a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
Henrik Ibsen
A minority may be right a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen
This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!
Henrik Ibsen
To seek one's goals and to drive toward it steeling one's heart is most uplifting!
Henrik Ibsen
And what if I did run my ship aground oh still it was splendid to sail it!
Henrik Ibsen
Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
Henrik Ibsen
Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.
Henrik Ibsen
While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior — don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
Henrik Ibsen
Ghosts! […] 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. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
Henrik Ibsen
It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's 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 can't get rid of them.
Henrik Ibsen
Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest men are the most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
Torvald: I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora--bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves. Nora: But hundreds of thousands of women have done!
Henrik Ibsen
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
Henrik Ibsen
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.
Henrik Ibsen
You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
Henrik Ibsen
Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?
Henrik Ibsen
We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you'll hear him spouting about "the child too early torn from her father's heart;" then you'll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment and self-admiration and self-pity. Just you wait!
Henrik Ibsen
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.
Henrik Ibsen
She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather
Henrik Ibsen
When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls.
Henrik Ibsen
You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: Yes; it is just so, Torvald. While I was still at home with father, he used to tell me all his views, and so of course I held the same views; if at any time I had a different view I concealed it, because he would not have liked people with opinions of their own. He used to call me his little doll, and play with me, as I in my turn used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: No; only merry. And you were always so friendly and kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a nursery. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And my children were, in their turn, my dolls. I was exceedingly delighted when you played with me, just as children were whenever I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.
Henrik Ibsen
The right? Ah, what does it help to be in the right if you don't have any power?
Henrik Ibsen
I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one.
Henrik Ibsen
To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind
Henrik Ibsen
People so easily forget their past selves.
Henrik Ibsen
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is. ... When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me.
Henrik Ibsen
It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life
Henrik Ibsen
I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.
Henrik Ibsen
A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.
Henrik Ibsen
To live is to war with trolls.
Henrik Ibsen
You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.
Henrik Ibsen