Henrik Ibsen Quotes

He is suffering from an acute attack of integrity.

I'll risk everything together with you.

I'm also like a half-drowned woman on a wreck. No one to suffer with; no one to care for.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. You are very fond, sir, of talking about the consideration we owe to the community; it seems to me, however, that the community has its duties too. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Så usigelig fattig kan en sjel da gå
tilbake til intet i det tåkete grå.
Du deilige jord, vær ikke vred
at jeg trampet ditt gress til ingen nytte.
Du deilige sol, du har sløset med
dine lysende stenk i en folketom hytte.
Der satt ingen der inne å varme og stemme; -
eieren, sier de, var aldri hjemme.
Deilige sol og deilige jord,
I var dumme at I bar og lyste for min mor.
Ånden er karrig og naturen ødsel.
Det er dyrt å bøte med livet for sin fødsel. -
Jeg vil oppad, høyt, på den bratteste tinde;
jeg vil ennu engang se solen rinne,
stirre meg trett på det lovede land,
se å få snedyngen over meg kavet;
de kan skrive derover «her er ingen begravet»;
og bakefter - siden - ! La det gå som det kan.

I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world — out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew — higher than ever before — in spite of all that lay between.

Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.

Men are funny characters, they must always have something to bemuse them.

Rank.'Certainly. However wretched I may feel, I want to prolong the agony as long as possible."

Flertallet har magten — desværre —; men retten har det ikke. Retten har jeg og de andre få, de enkelte. Minoriteten har altid retten.

Nora: It's true Torvald. When I lived at home with Papa, he used to tell me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinion. If I thought differently, I had to hide it from him, or he wouldn't have liked it. He called me his little doll, and he used to play with me just as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house -

Helmer: That's no way to talk about our marriage!

Nora [undisturbed]: I mean when I passed out of Papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything to suit your own tastes, and so I came to have the same tastes as yours.. or I pretended to. I'm not quite sure which.. perhaps it was a bit of both — sometimes one and sometimes the other. Now that I come to look at it, I've lived here like a pauper — simply from hand to mouth. I've lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. That was how you wanted it. You and Papa have committed a grievous sin against me: it's your fault that I've made nothing of my life.

And though I have sailed my boat hard aground,
O, it was so grand to be sailing!

I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately - the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.

I've the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.