Top 100 Henrik Ibsen Quotes
#1. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#2. Nobody can put a character on paper without - at any rate in part and at times - sitting as a model for it himself.
Henrik Ibsen
#3. Because there is surely nothing in the world that can compare with happiness of forgiveness and of lifting up a guilty sinner in the arms of love.
Henrik Ibsen
#4. Oh yes, right - right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?
Henrik Ibsen
#5. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#6. Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
Henrik Ibsen
#7. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#8. To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.
Henrik Ibsen
#9. It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life
Henrik Ibsen
#10. What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
Henrik Ibsen
#11. STRAWMAN. Are you less Intractable than when we parted? FALK. Nay, I go my own inexorable way - STRAWMAN. Even tho' you crush another's happiness? FALK. I plant the flower of knowledge in its place. [Smiling.
Henrik Ibsen
#12. When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.
Henrik Ibsen
#13. The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
Henrik Ibsen
#14. Let others emulate the eagle's flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.
Henrik Ibsen
#15. That is the accursed thing about small surroundings
they make the soul small.
Henrik Ibsen
#17. Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.
Henrik Ibsen
#18. People so easily forget their past selves.
Henrik Ibsen
#19. The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - these are the pillars of society.
Henrik Ibsen
#20. 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
#21. A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
#22. Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!
Henrik Ibsen
#23. World-comedy of Love's contriving - naive fools of fancy, passionately weaving the cords that are to strangle passion.
Henrik Ibsen
#24. Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing
Henrik Ibsen
#26. SIGURD. Man's will can do this and that; but fate rules in the deeds that shape our lives - so has it gone with us twain.
Henrik Ibsen
#28. Not in that sense. What I need is the companionship of another person who can, as it were, complete me - supply what is wanting in me - be one with me in all my striving. MAIA.
Henrik Ibsen
#29. If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
Henrik Ibsen
#30. The White God is coming northward; him will I not meet; the old gods are strong no longer; - they sleep, they sit half shadow- high; - with them will we strive!
Henrik Ibsen
#31. Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.
Henrik Ibsen
#32. KROGSTAD: The law cares nothing about motives.
NORA: Then it must be a very foolish law.
Henrik Ibsen
#33. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#34. And though I have sailed my boat hard aground,
O, it was so grand to be sailing!
Henrik Ibsen
#35. If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.
Henrik Ibsen
#36. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#37. Mrs LINDE: When you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it second time.
Henrik Ibsen
#38. 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
#39. I thought you understood where I'd lost what you call my heart at the time.
Henrik Ibsen
#40. You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
#41. 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."
Henrik Ibsen
#42. Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
Henrik Ibsen
#43. Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.
Henrik Ibsen
#44. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#45. Time was when I was young, like you, and played Like you, the unconquerable Titan's part; Year after year I toiled and moiled for bread, Which hardens a man's hand, but not his heart. For northern fells my lonely home surrounded, And by my parish bounds my world was bounded.
Henrik Ibsen
#46. The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.
Henrik Ibsen
#47. Our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.
Henrik Ibsen
#48. About the white and shining milky way? Man may not there the milk of fortune skim, Nor is the butter of it meant for him.
Henrik Ibsen
#49. Think. I dragged myself along among the precipices - and revelled in the peace and luxury of death.
Henrik Ibsen
#50. ALLMERS. No. For it is here, in the life of earth, that we living beings are at home.
Henrik Ibsen
#52. Every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.
Henrik Ibsen
#53. I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
Henrik Ibsen
#54. I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
Henrik Ibsen
#55. Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.
Henrik Ibsen
#56. Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.
Henrik Ibsen
#57. The truth is that there are two men in Ibsen - an idealist, exalted to the verge of sentimentality, and a critic, hard, inexorable, remorseless, to the verge of cynicism. What we call his "social philosophy" is a modus vivendi arrived at between them. Both agree in repudiating "marriage for love";
Henrik Ibsen
#58. The starving poet business is no good nowadays.
Henrik Ibsen
#59. Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?
Henrik Ibsen
#61. NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I'm to get to know myself and the world outside. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.
Henrik Ibsen
#62. There are people one loves and others one likes to talk to
Henrik Ibsen
#63. Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.
Henrik Ibsen
#64. I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.
Henrik Ibsen
#65. What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is 'himself'.
Henrik Ibsen
#66. What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
#67. You must not think, Mrs. Borkman, that I haven't said the same to him. I have laid my whole life before him. Again and again I have reminded him that I am seven years older than he -
Henrik Ibsen
#68. The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority
Henrik Ibsen
#69. To think it, wish it, even want it
but do it! No, that I cannot understand.
Henrik Ibsen
#70. Writing has ... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
Henrik Ibsen
#71. MAIA. - all the glory of the world? Yes, you did. And all that glory should be mine, you said.
Henrik Ibsen
#72. Werle: "I believe there is no one in the world you detest as you do me."
Gregers: "I have seen you at too close quarters.
Henrik Ibsen
#73. Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.
Henrik Ibsen
#74. The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.
Henrik Ibsen
#75. To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.
Henrik Ibsen
#76. But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.
Henrik Ibsen
#77. But if you are to die, live first! Come forth With me into the glory of God's earth! Soon, soon the gilded cage will claim its prize. The Lady thrives there, but the Woman dies, And I love nothing but the Woman in you.
Henrik Ibsen
#78. It's a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.
Henrik Ibsen
#79. 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
#80. Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for.
Henrik Ibsen
#81. To "those about to marry," Ibsen therefore says in effect, "Be sure you are not in love!" And to those who are in love he says, "Part!
Henrik Ibsen
#82. The idol of Authority must be shattered in this town.
Henrik Ibsen
#83. Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.
Henrik Ibsen
#84. When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground dissolved from under my feet. Look at me; I'm a half-drowned man now, hanging onto a wreck.
Henrik Ibsen
#85. A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney ...
Henrik Ibsen
#86. 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
#87. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#88. But he got right to the top. And I heard harps in the air. My - my master builder!
Henrik Ibsen
#89. One bird's an eagle born - FALK. And one a hen.
Henrik Ibsen
#90. Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
Henrik Ibsen
#91. The pillars of truth and the pillars of freedom - they are the pillars of society.
Henrik Ibsen
#92. You have made an empty place within me; and I must try to fill it up with something - with something that is a little like love.
Henrik Ibsen
#93. Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.
Henrik Ibsen
#94. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#95. The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - he first individualizes.
Henrik Ibsen
#96. Nora: Torvald, don't look at me like that!
Torvald: Can't I look at my richest treasure? At all that beauty that's mine, mine alone-completely and utterly.
Henrik Ibsen
#97. To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind
Henrik Ibsen
#98. Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.
Henrik Ibsen
#99. You don't get nothing for nothing in this life.
Henrik Ibsen
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