“It’s not only what we have inherited 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.”

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

To see one’s goal and to drive toward it, steeling one’s heart, is most uplifting.

What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

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

The devil is compromise.

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That’s a thought I’ll never endure! Never.

Helmer: “Before all else you are a wife and a mother.” Nora: “That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being.”

Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.

You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.

Many a man can save himself if he admits he’s done wrong and takes his punishment.

Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.

Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.

To live is to war with trolls.

What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one’s self?

If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.

We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance.

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

Every human being was born with an inherent gift, and that gift is their gift to humanity; they are supposed to serve humanity in the area of their gifting.

Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.

Indeed, the hereditary gift of prophecy will go to the grave with me.

What India needs is ease of doing business and inherent faith in the ability of Indians to catch an opportunity.

His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.