Henrik Ibsen
The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.Collection: Blow
Mrs LINDE: When you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it second time.Collection: Sake
An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Power
Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.Collection: Commitment
But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.Collection: Men
I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majorityCollection: Majority
Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Children
What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.Collection: Sick
Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea.... We are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.Collection: Country
Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.Collection: Needs
The younger generation will come knocking at my door.Collection: Young Generation
There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Believe
What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Atheism
What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is 'himself'.Collection: Men
Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.Collection: Might
In great memories there lies the seed of growth.Collection: Memories
That is the accursed thing about small surroundings -- they make the soul small.Collection: Soul
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.Collection: Truth
To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.Collection: War
To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.Collection: Agony
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."Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Mother
The man-at-arms is the only man.Collection: Military
Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Discovery
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.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Night
I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.Collection: Men
There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Would Be
Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Sea
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.Collection: World
Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.Collection: Lying
I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.Collection: Lying
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.Collection: Inspirational
It's such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string — when one slips off, all the rest follow.Collection: Hero
There is nothing so enervating and exhausting as this hopeless waiting. I dare say this is only a transition period. I will and shall have a victory some day. If the powers that be have shown me so little favor as to place me in this world and make me what I am, the result must be accordingly.Collection: Waiting
I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.Collection: Sacred
It is no use lying to one's self.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Children
A thousand words can't make the mark a single deed will leave.Collection: Deeds
If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.Collection: Lying