Henrik Ibsen Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.

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.

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

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

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.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

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.

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.

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

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

A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.

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