Henrik Ibsen Quotes

116 Sourced Quotes

To live is - to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind

Henrik Ibsen
Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.

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

Henrik Ibsen
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.

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

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

Henrik Ibsen
I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing.

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

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

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

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

Henrik Ibsen
Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.

Henrik Ibsen
I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
Every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

Henrik Ibsen
If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen