Henrik Ibsen Quotations | Page 2

Oh yes, right—right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?

The strongest men are the most alone.

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

Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.

Helmer: "Before all else you are a wife and a mother." Nora: "That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being."

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.

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

The man-at-arms is the only man.

There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart.

The majority never has right on its side.

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

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

An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.

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

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

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

Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

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

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

The strong must learn to be lonely.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

...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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

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

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.

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

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

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

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.

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

A friend married is a friend lost.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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