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

Henrik Ibsen

Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!
HENRIK IBSEN

Hustle Moaning Myself
Writing has… been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
HENRIK IBSEN

Freedom Health Myself Writing
A forest bird never wants a cage.
HENRIK IBSEN

Bird Cage Forest Freedom Wild
To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.
HENRIK IBSEN

Agony Death Execution Himself Willing
An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty’s sake.
HENRIK IBSEN

Live Myself Poem Responsibility Romantic
Many a man can save himself if he admits he’s done wrong and takes his punishment.
HENRIK IBSEN

Himself Man Punishment Save Wrong
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population — the intelligent ones or the fools?
HENRIK IBSEN

Fools Freedom Intelligence Lying Majority People Population Right
The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing.
HENRIK IBSEN

Friendship Lying Oneself
Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
HENRIK IBSEN

Alone Happiness Oneself Trouble
A friend married is a friend lost.
HENRIK IBSEN

Friendship Lost Marriage
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

Beginning Pick Understand Yourself
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.
HENRIK IBSEN

Country Ghost Light Myself Newspaper
If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
HENRIK IBSEN

Doubt Ground Stand Yourself
I’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.
HENRIK IBSEN

Lying Old Practice Revolution Truth Yourself
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.
HENRIK IBSEN

Belief Inheritance Mom Myself Thinking
Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.
HENRIK IBSEN

Close Live Myself Relate Writing
I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say and what’s written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.
HENRIK IBSEN

Acceptance Answer Finding Myself Preparation Try
It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
HENRIK IBSEN

Achievement Man Transformation Willing
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrafice his honor for the one he loves. Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
HENRIK IBSEN

Day Man Night Sorrow Woman
The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority.
HENRIK IBSEN

Compact Dangerous Enemy Majority
Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.
HENRIK IBSEN

Action Dare Game Happiness Winning
I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
HENRIK IBSEN

Afraid Capital Education Invention Machine Myself Science
You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
HENRIK IBSEN

Happiness Love Pleasant Yourself
The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.
HENRIK IBSEN

Destroy Existence Greatness Institution Task
Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.
HENRIK IBSEN

Borrow Debt Finding Home Life
Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical.
HENRIK IBSEN

Cruel Myself Touch
You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.
HENRIK IBSEN

Love People Yourself

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

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

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Popular Authors

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