Best 143 quotes of Henrik Ibsen on MyQuotes

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

A friend married is a friend lost.

Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your emancipation. You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields - discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West - superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.

But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

But 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.

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

Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

Don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.

Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.

Each bird must sing with his own throat.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.

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

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

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

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.

...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.

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.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

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.

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

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

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

It is not for a care-free existence I am fighting, but for the possibility of devoting myself to the task which I believe and know has been laid upon me by God -- the work which seems to me more important and needful in Norway than any other, that of arousing the nation and leading it to think great thoughts.

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

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.

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.

It's such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string — when one slips off, all the rest follow.

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.

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.

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