Henrik Ibsen Quotes

You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.

To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind

You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man

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

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

Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.

The man-at-arms is the only man.

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

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

It is no use lying to one's self.

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.

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

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is 'himself'.

That is the accursed thing about small surroundings -- they make the soul small.

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

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.

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.

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

When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.

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.

The majority never has right on its side.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.

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

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

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

There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.

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.

I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority

The strongest men are the most alone.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

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

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

Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.

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."

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

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

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.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

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

A thousand words can't make the mark a single deed will leave.