“This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!”

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.

Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.

The majority never has right on its side.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

I have other duties equally sacred, Duties to myself.

It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.

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.