What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is ‘himself’.
HENRIK IBSENWhat’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
More Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I’m to get to know myself and the world outside. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.
HENRIK IBSEN -
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.
HENRIK IBSEN -
To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.
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The majority never has right on its side.
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Each bird must sing with his own throat.
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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.
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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.
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The devil is compromise.
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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.
HENRIK IBSEN -
An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty’s sake.
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Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man.
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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.”
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It’s a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.
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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.
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Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
HENRIK IBSEN