Henrik Ibsen Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man

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

The strongest men are the most alone.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.

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

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