Henrik Ibsen - Ghosts (1881)

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I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

Henrik Ibsen
Oh yes, right—right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?

Henrik Ibsen
It's not only what we have invited 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.

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

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

Henrik Ibsen
Oh, yes—you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side—unfortunately; but right it has not.

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
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