Henrik Ibsen Quotations

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

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.

A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.

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.

These heroes of finance are like beads on a string; when one slips off, all the rest follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - he first individualizes.

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man

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

Do not use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'

Don't use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'

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.

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!

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.

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.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion and you rob him also of his happiness

But, merciful God! People don't do such things!

Emperor? You old fake! / You're no Emperor. You're just an onion. / Now then, little Peer, I'm going to peel you.

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

Some day, youth will come here and thunder on my door, and force its way in to me.

Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness

A woman cannot be herself in modern society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess female conduct from a male standpoint.

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

You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth.

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

Always do that, wild duck. Stick at the bottom. Deep as they can get. . . . And so they never come up again.

A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth

They may soon expect the white horse at Rosmersholm now.

As you can see, I'm a button-moulder. / You must go into my casting ladle.

It was love for me - her kind of love - that drove her into the mill-race.

Sleep, O sleep, my dearest boy. / I will cradle you, I will guard you.

In that second it dawned on me that I had been living here for eight years with a strange man and had borne him three children.

I don't wish you anything but just what you are - my own sweet little song-bird.

I can see him. With vine leaves in his hair.

These heroes of finance are like beads on a string when one slips off, all the rest follow

Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your ''emancipation.'' You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields -- discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West -- superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.

A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney ...

If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

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

Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.

Nobody can put a character on paper without - at any rate in part and at times - sitting as a model for it himself.

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

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 sand of the sea.... We are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.

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.

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.

What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.

There is nothing so enervating and exhausting as this hopeless waiting. I dare say this is only a transition period. I will and shall have a victory some day. If the powers that be have shown me so little favor as to place me in this world and make me what I am, the result must be accordingly.

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.

The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

HELMER; But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties? NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty? HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn't it your duty to your husband and children? NORA:I have another duty, just as sacred. HELMER: You can't have. What duty do you mean? NORA: My duty to myself.

Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

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.

To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.

I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.

To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

A friend married is a friend lost.

Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.

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.

Mrs LINDE: When you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it second time.

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

Ive had the best possible chance of learning that what the working-classes really need is to be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs, Doctorto develop their abilities, their understanding and their self-respect.

I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit.

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.

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.

And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

Oh, life would be all right if we didn't have to put up with these damned creditors who keep pestering us with the demands of their ideals.

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.

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

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

The strong must learn to be lonely.

Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.

Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

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

The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing.

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.

A thousand words can't make the mark a single deed will leave.

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

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