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.
HENRIK IBSENMost critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself — thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.
More Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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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.
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Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.
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The strongest men are the most alone.
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It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.
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It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
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The devil is compromise.
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Oh courage, oh yes! If only one had that. Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.
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Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. We are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
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A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.
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Oh, life would be all right if we didn’t have to put up with these damned creditors who keep pestering us with the demands of their ideals.
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There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.
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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.
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Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society’s tools, neither more nor less.
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I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.
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An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty’s sake.
HENRIK IBSEN






