Henrik Ibsen Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

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

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

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

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.

The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? 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.

...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 don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

The greatest victory is defeat.

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

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.

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

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.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

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

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

There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.

To live is to war with trolls.

To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.

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

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.

I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.

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.

What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

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

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

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.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

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.

Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.

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 worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

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.

Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

The devil is compromise.

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.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

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

Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.