Ibsen Quotes

(The feast-room in GUNNAR'S house. The entrance-door is in the back; smaller doors in the side-walls. In front, on the left, the greater high-seat; opposite it on the right, the lesser. In the middle of the floor, a wood fire is burning on a built-up hearth. In the background, on both sides of the door, are daises for the women of the household. From each of the high-seats, a long table, with benches, stretches backwards, parallel with the wall. It is dark outside; the fire lights the room.) ~ Henrik Ibsen

In actual fact, however, the revolt of Ibsen and Shaw against the conventional nineteenth century drama could very well be described as a return to Shakespeare, as an attempt once again to present human beings in their historical and social setting and not, as playwrights since the Restoration had done, either as wholly private or as embodiments of the social manners of a tiny class. Shakespeare's plays, it is true, are not, in the Shavian sense, "dramas of thought," that is to say, not one of his characters is an intellectual: it is true, as Shaw says, that, when stripped of their wonderful diction, the philosophical and moral views expressed by his characters are commonplaces, but the number of people in any generation or society whose thoughts are not commonplace is very small indeed. On the other hand, there is hardly one of his plays which does not provide unending food for thought, if one cares to think about it. ~ W. H. Auden

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

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

Helmer: To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don't consider what people will say!

Nora: I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary
for me.

Helmer: It's shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.

Nora: What do you consider my most sacred duties?

Helmer: Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?

Nora: I have other duties just as sacred.

Helmer: That you have not. What duties could those be?

Nora: Duties to myself.

Helmer: Before all else, you are a wife and mother.

Nora: I don't believe that any longer. 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. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

the strongest man is he who stands most alone ~ Henrik Ibsen

You possibly believe I keep the glue Of lies for Happiness's in a broken jar? ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

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

Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

The idol of Authority must be shattered in this town. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character. ~ Alex Kingston

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

Think, Dagny, what it is to sit by the window in the eventide and hear the kelpie wailing in the boat-house; to sit waiting and listening for the dead men's ride to Valhal; for their way lies past us here in the north. They are the brave men that fell in fight, the strong women that did not drag out their lives tamely, like thee and me; they sweep through the storm-night on their black horses, with jangling bells! Ha, Dagny! think of riding the last ride on so rare a steed! ~ Henrik Ibsen

Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall. ~ Henrik Ibsen

...only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don't want and I don't grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism. ~ Renzo Novatore

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

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

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

We are in danger, all of us, and I will give you an example why - a journalist I knew years ago. He was a good journalist. He went around the world and recorded what he saw and came to various conclusions. He said, Paris is this and London is that - and Greece is worth a couple of days. He felt two days was enough to give him an understanding of Greece. What that statement reveals is that the basis of our Western culture now, and of professional man, is middle-class. The middle class makes statements and knows nothing. You and I are the middle class and must think of ourselves as middle-class. We are middleclass actors, middle-class journalists, middle-class plumbers and morticians. The creation of the modern theater took a genius like Ibsen. ~ Stella Adler

When I saw 'Legally Blonde' on Broadway, I rang my agent and said 'I want to be seen for this,' but the rest weren't big choices, really. 'Hedda Gabler' was a phone call offering it to me, and as I've said before quite embarrassingly, I didn't know the play, so I didn't sit there thinking 'I would now like to tackle Ibsen.' ~ Sheridan Smith

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

To be oneself on a basis of gold
is no better than founding one's house on the sand.
For your watch, and your ring, and the rest of your trappings
the good people fawn on you, grovelling to earth;
they lift their hats to your jewelled breast-pin;
but your ring and your breast-pin are not your person.- ~ Henrik Ibsen

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III. ~ Ving Rhames

Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to. ~ Henrik Ibsen

Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they of
iron or of gold. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

To live is to war with trolls. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

But he got right to the top. And I heard harps in the air. My - my master builder! ~ Henrik Ibsen

One bird's an eagle born - FALK. And one a hen. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

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

Helmer: (...) Have you not been happy here?
Nora: No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never been so.
Helmer: Not--not happy?
Nora: No, only merry. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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! ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

Nevertheless the severance is rather casual and it drops a stain on our admiration of Nora. Ibsen has put the leaving of her children on the same moral and emotional level as the leaving of her husband and we cannot, in our hearts, asssent to that. It is not only the leaving but the way the play does not have time for suffering, changes of heart. Ibsen has been too much a man in the end. He has taken the man's practice, if not his stated belief, that where self-realization is concerned children shall not be an impediment. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

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

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

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

Ibsen: "Education is the capacity to confront the situations posed by life. ~ Jon Lee Anderson

NORA: Yes; it is just so, Torvald. While I was still at home with father, he used to tell me all his views, and so of course I held the same views; if at any time I had a different view I concealed it, because he would not have liked people with opinions of their own. He used to call me his little doll, and play with me, as I in my turn used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. ~ Henrik Ibsen

How can I hold you close enough? ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door." The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve? ~ Al Gore

I'm not a big, three-hour-play, Ibsen-revival kind of man. ~ James Gandolfini

Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit. ~ Liv Ullmann

The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

Good god, people don't do such things! ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

In great memories there lies the seed of growth. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

Sonechka, meanwhile, placid soul that she was - cocooned by the thousand volumes of her reading, lulled by the hazy murmurings of the Greek myths, the hypnotically shrill recorder fluting of the Middle Ages, the misty windswept yearning of Ibsen, the minutely detailed tedium of Balzac, the astral music of Dante, the siren song of the piercing voices of Rilke and Novalis, seduced by the moralistic despair of the great Russian writers calling out to the heart of heaven itself - this placid soul had no awareness that her great moment was at hand. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

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

OSWALD: Is it very late, mother?
MRS. ALVING: It is early morning. [She looks out through the conservatory.] The day is dawning over the mountains. And the weather is clearing, Oswald. In a little while you shall see the sun.
OSWALD: I'm glad of that. Oh, I may still have much to rejoice in and live for-- ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

It is no use lying to one's self. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

A Doll's House is about money, about the way it turns locks. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics. ~ Harvey Korman

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

While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior - don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

Gina. I wish to goodness that detestable thing had never set his foot inside our doors! ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

The State is the curse of the individual ... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing. ~ Henrik Ibsen

The Sexual plight of these children [those adolescents experimenting sexually] is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. Is it an eccentric opinion that an important part of the kids' restiveness in school from the onset of puberty has to do with puberty? The teachers talk about it among themselves, all right. (In his school, Bertrand Russell thought it was better if they had sex, so they could give their undivided attention to mathematics, which was the main thing.) But since the objective factor does not exist in our schools, the school itself begins to be irrelevant. The question here is not whether sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialogue, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.

In American society we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship: to allow every one his political right to say what he believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspapers, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says and give the official way of looking at things. ~ Paul Goodman

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

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, somethingyou can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places. ~ Minnie Maddern Fiske

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

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

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

Gemma Arterton in 'The Master Builder' at the Almeida - she was absolutely brilliant. Ibsen is difficult and quite hard to follow, but she just brings the stage to life. ~ Luke Evans

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

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

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

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. ~ Henrik Ibsen

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

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

You don't get nothing for nothing in this life. ~ Henrik Ibsen