Top 100 Ibsen's Quotes
#1. You played it with great seriousness. And it is not such an uncommon game. Do you know Ibsen's poem
To live it to do battle with trolls
in the vaults of the heart and brain.
To write: that is to sit
in judgement over one's self.
Robertson Davies
#2. I relate to Nora's transformation in Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House,' and I also relate to both sisters' journeys in John Madden's film 'Proof.'
Autumn Reeser
#3. Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.
Henrik Ibsen
#5. When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
Annette Bening
#6. I studied acting in NYU's graduate program, in which we covered everything from Ibsen and Chekov to August Wilson and David Mamet.
Andre Holland
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. Ibsen is at heart an optimist. He could not close his life's work with a note of negation. When We Dead Awaken is a clear, ringing call to the future.
Jeanette Lee
#11. One's life is a heavy price to pay for being born.
Henrik Ibsen
#12. An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.
Henrik Ibsen
#13. So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
Henrik Ibsen
#14. It's a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.
Henrik Ibsen
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.
Mandy Patinkin
#18. If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
Henrik Ibsen
#19. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#20. However wretched I may feel, I want to prolong the agony as long as possible. All my patients are like that. And so are those who are morally diseased..
Henrik Ibsen
#21. There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.
Henrik Ibsen
#22. 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
#23. Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.
Henrik Ibsen
#24. Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
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
#27. 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
#28. I did [Henrik] Ibsen and [Anton] Chekhov for years. Obviously I didn't get the kind of recognition I have now. Somebody once told me, "You ride the horse the direction it's going."
Joe Manganiello
#29. One bird's an eagle born - FALK. And one a hen.
Henrik Ibsen
#30. What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.
Henrik Ibsen
#31. 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
#33. 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?
Henrik Ibsen
#34. Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for.
Henrik Ibsen
#35. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.
Henrik Ibsen
#40. No, I don't think one ought to be at everybody's beck and call. Anyway, I'm not going to be.
Henrik Ibsen
#41. One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
Henrik Ibsen
#42. I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.
Kurt Sutter
#43. A talent for building children's souls, Hilde. So building their souls that they might grow straight and fine, nobly and beautifully formed, to their full human stature. That was where Aline's talent lay.
Henrik Ibsen
#44. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#45. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#46. People want only special revolutions, in externals, in politics, and so on. But that's just tinkering. What is really is called for is a revolution of the human mind.
Henrik Ibsen
#47. What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
#48. A lot of young girls who came to see me in 'Legally Blonde' have come to see 'Hedda,' and they hadn't heard of the play either, just like I was before I did it! If I can bring a younger generation to see an Ibsen play; that's just brilliant.
Sheridan Smith
#49. I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
Henrik Ibsen
#50. 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
#51. Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.
Annette Bening
#52. [Suddenly letting slip the train of thought.] Do you know, the people down at the hotel think she's mad. PROFESSOR RUBEK. Indeed? And pray what do the people down at the hotel think of you and the bear-killer?
Henrik Ibsen
#53. 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
#54. OSWALD: [Repeats, in a dull, toneless voice.] The sun. The sun.
Henrik Ibsen
#55. What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
Henrik Ibsen
#56. It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life
Henrik Ibsen
#57. To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.
Henrik Ibsen
#58. I'm not a big, three-hour-play, Ibsen-revival kind of man.
James Gandolfini
#59. The younger generation will come knocking at my door.
Henrik Ibsen
#60. In great memories there lies the seed of growth.
Henrik Ibsen
#61. 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
#62. Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
Henrik Ibsen
#63. Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.
Henrik Ibsen
#64. You possibly believe I keep the glue Of lies for Happiness's in a broken jar?
Henrik Ibsen
#65. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#66. 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
#67. Oh yes, right - right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?
Henrik Ibsen
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. Anyone who's sold herself for somebody else once isn't going to do it again.
Henrik Ibsen
#71. 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
#72. You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.
Philip Larkin
#73. Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit.
Liv Ullmann
#74. I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.
Henrik Ibsen
#75. So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.
Trevor Nunn
#76. A man's moral character may be completely sapped; that is the dreadful part of it.
Henrik Ibsen
#77. People so easily forget their past selves.
Henrik Ibsen
#78. Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing
Henrik Ibsen
#79. World-comedy of Love's contriving - naive fools of fancy, passionately weaving the cords that are to strangle passion.
Henrik Ibsen
#80. Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!
Henrik Ibsen
#81. A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
#82. 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
#83. These heroes of finance are like beads on a string; when one slips off, all the rest follow.
Henrik Ibsen
#84. The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.
Henrik Ibsen
#85. I thought I would spent my career doing Chekhov and Ibsen in regional theaters, so the fact that I started doing new plays was a whole new world I didn't expect, and that I would like to keep doing.
Zeljko Ivanek
#86. In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That's a thought I'll never endure! Never.
Henrik Ibsen
#87. The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - these are the pillars of society.
Henrik Ibsen
#88. I'm inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.
Henrik Ibsen
#90. 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
#91. Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.
Henrik Ibsen
#92. Whether they know it or not, most American playgoers owe an incalculably great debt to translators. Were it not for their work, comparatively few of us would be able to enjoy the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen or Moliere.
Terry Teachout
#93. Dr. Stockmann. I have already told you that what I want to speak about
is the great discovery I have made lately
the discovery that all the
sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the hole fabric of our
civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.
Henrik Ibsen
#95. 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
#96. That is the accursed thing about small surroundings
they make the soul small.
Henrik Ibsen
#97. 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.
Henrik Ibsen
#98. Let others emulate the eagle's flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.
Henrik Ibsen
#99. The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
Henrik Ibsen
#100. When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.
Henrik Ibsen
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