Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Henrik Ibsen
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Do not use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'
The pillars of truth and the pillars of freedom - they are the pillars of society.
The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.
I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. 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!
People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it.
Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - he first individualizes.
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - these are the pillars of society.
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.
A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
Don't use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent native word 'lies.'
Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.
Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man.
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
The devil is compromise.
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!
The spectacles of experience; through them you will see clearly a second time.
A forest bird never wants a cage.
The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.
The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.
These heroes of finance are like beads on a string; when one slips off, all the rest follow.
A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.
Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.
What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
To live is to war with trolls.
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.
Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.
Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.
Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.
Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.
Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.
The strong must learn to be lonely.
But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is 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 cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
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.
If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.
Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.
Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.
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.
Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as what they keep us from doing.
...every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.
The greatest victory is defeat.
There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.
The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? 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.
The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority
To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.
...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.
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney.
Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
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.
You don't get nothing for nothing in this life.
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