Henrik Ibsen - The Wild Duck (1884)

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Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom... as deep as they can get... hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff— and all the other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

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

Henrik Ibsen
Always do that, wild ducks do. They shoot to the bottom as deep as they can get, sir — and bite themselves fast in the tangle and seaweed — and all the devil's own mess that grows down there. And they never come up again.

Henrik Ibsen
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.

Henrik Ibsen
Forget that foreign word "ideals." We have that good old native word: "lies."

Henrik Ibsen
Take the life-lie away from the average man and straightaway you take away his happiness.

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

Henrik Ibsen