“I’m inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It’s not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.”

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.

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.

The mental ability to concentrate is inherent to all; it is not extraordinary or mysterious. Meditation is not something that a Yogi has to teach you; you already have the ability to shut out thoughts.

The art of medicine cannot be inherited, nor can it be copied from books

Let the meek inherit the earth — they have it coming to them.

Grace is the seed of glory, the dawning of glory in the heart, and therefore grace is the earnest of the future inheritance.

He comes as a guest to the feast of existence, and knows that what matters is not how much he inherits but how he behaves at the feast, and what people remember and love him for.

Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.

Those in supreme power always suspect and hate their next heir.

If you’re a good person, the goodness will continue through your descendants.