Henrik Ibsen Quotes

If you take the life lie from an average man, you take away his happiness as well.

He is suffering from an acute attack of integrity.

I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.

People so easily forget their past selves.

Think, Dagny, what it is to sit by the window in the eventide and hear the kelpie wailing in the boat-house; to sit waiting and listening for the dead men's ride to Valhal; for their way lies past us here in the north. They are the brave men that fell in fight, the strong women that did not drag out their lives tamely, like thee and me; they sweep through the storm-night on their black horses, with jangling bells! Ha, Dagny! think of riding the last ride on so rare a steed!

I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

He last, late guest
To the gate we followed;
Goodbye – and the rest
The night-wind swallowed.

House, garden, street,
Lay tenfold gloomy,
Where accents sweet
Had made music to me.

It was but a feast
With the dark coming on;
She was but a guest –
And now, she is gone.

Not in that sense. What I need is the companionship of another person who can, as it were, complete me — supply what is wanting in me — be one with me in all my striving. MAIA.

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

When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now — I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit of wreckage.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

To think it, wish it, even want it — but do it! No, that I cannot understand.

I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

You have made an empty place within me; and I must try to fill it up with something — with something that is a little like love.

[From below comes the noise of a door slamming.]