Henrik Ibsen Quotes - Page 6

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.

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

It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.

The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.

An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty's sake.

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.

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.

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

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

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

What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.

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.

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

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

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.

Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.