Henrik Ibsen Quotes

the strongest man is he who stands most alone

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

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.

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.

You've never loved me, you've only found it pleasant to be in love with me.

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

Good god, people don't do such things!

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

The forests avenge themselves.

(A thrill of dread runs through the whole group; ASGARDSREIEN - the ride of the fallen heroes to Valhal - hurtles through the air.)

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.

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

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 -

I'll risk everything together with you.

To live is to war with trolls.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life

What good would that ever do me if you were gone from this world, as you say? Not the slightest.

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.

Each bird must sing with his own throat.

Oh, we are all of us run over, sometime or other in life. The thing is to jump up again, and let no one see you are hurt.

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

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.

Both agree in repudiating "marriage for love"; but the idealist repudiates it in the name of love, the critic in the name of marriage. Love, for the idealist Ibsen, is a passion which loses its virtue when it reaches its goal, which inspires only while it aspires, and flags bewildered when it attains. Marriage, for the critic Ibsen, is an institution beset with pitfalls into which those are surest to step who enter it blinded with love.

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 is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.

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.

Let others emulate the eagle's flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.

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.

You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

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

Oh, that was a terrible time for me, I can tell you. I kept the blinds drawn down over both my windows. When I peeped out, I saw the sun shining as if nothing had happened. I could not understand it. I saw people going along the street, laughing and talking about indifferent things. I could not understand it. It seemed to me that the whole of existence must be at a standstill
as if under an eclipse.

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

I'm completely alone in the world; it frightens me to be so empty and lost.

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

Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

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."

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

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

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

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.

Every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

I have had a delightfully lonely time of it - plenty of leisure to think and think about things.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

Anyone who's sold herself for somebody else once isn't going to do it again.

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.

Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.

As soon as your fear was over
and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you
when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile.

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

It is no use lying to one's self.

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.

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.

The strongest men are the most alone.

first condition of a happy marriage is the absence of love, and the first condition of an enduring love is the absence of marriage.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.

ALLMERS. No. For it is here, in the life of earth, that we living beings are at home.

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

I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world - out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew - higher than ever before - in spite of all that lay between.

The man-at-arms is the only man.

Here in the north each night is a whole winter long. Yet the place is fair enough, doubt it not! Thou shalt see sights here such as thou hast not seen in the halls of the English king. We shall be together as sisters whilst thou bidest with me; we shall go down to the sea when the storm begins once more; thou shalt see the billows rushing upon the land like wild, white-maned horses - and then the whales far out in the offing! They dash one against another like steel-clad knights! Ha, what joy to be a witching-wife and ride on the whale's back - to speed before the skiff, and wake the storm, and lure men to the deeps with lovely songs of sorcery!

And though I have sailed my boat hard aground,
O, it was so grand to be sailing!

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

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

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.

Frida. So after all, it is not for nothing that I was born a poet. For now she is going forth into the great wide world, that I once yearned so passionately to see. Little Frida sets out in a splendid covered sledge with silver bells on the harness -

A woman cannot be herself in modern society," he argues, since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.

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.

A friend married is a friend lost.

FALK. I feel myself like God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave that Light, - But stand its armed defender in the fight; Nothing shall part us, and our life shall prove A song of glory to triumphant love!

With me you could have been another person.

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

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.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

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.

One's life is a heavy price to pay for being born.

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.

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.

Haven't you ever noticed, Hilde, how seductive, how inviting . . . the impossible is?

HELMER: - To forsake your home, your husband, and your children! You don't consider what the world will say.
NORA: - I can pay no heed to that. I only know what I must do.
HELMER: - It is exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest duties in this world?
NORA: - What do you call my holiest duties?
HELMER: - Do you ask me that? Your duties to your husband and your children.
NORA: - I have other duties equally sacred.
HELMER: - Impossible! What duties do you mean?
NORA: - My duties towards myself.
HELMER: - Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
NORA: - That I no longer believe. I think that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are - or at least I will try to become one.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

I could not endure life without work. All my life, as
long as I can remember, I have worked, and it has been my greatest
and only pleasure. But now I am quite alone in the world
my life
is so dreadfully empty and I feel so forsaken. There is not the
least pleasure in working for one's self. Nils, give me someone and
something to work for.

To think it, wish it, even want it
but do it! No, that I cannot understand.