Henrik Ibsen Quotes - Page 3

A friend married is a friend lost.

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

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

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

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.

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

The devil is compromise.

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

Each bird must sing with his own throat.

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

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

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

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

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

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.

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

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

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.

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

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.

I believe that, before all else, I'm a human being, no less than you.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?

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

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

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.