What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
HENRIK IBSENI have other duties equally sacred, Duties to myself.
More Henrik Ibsen Quotes
-
-
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 -
Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
HENRIK IBSEN -
Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.
HENRIK IBSEN -
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 -
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 -
It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
HENRIK IBSEN -
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 -
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 -
If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.
HENRIK IBSEN -
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 IBSEN -
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 -
To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?
HENRIK IBSEN -
What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.
HENRIK IBSEN -
Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.
HENRIK IBSEN -
Each bird must sing with his own throat.
HENRIK IBSEN -
Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!
HENRIK IBSEN -
I go to scale the Future’s possibilities! Farewell!
HENRIK IBSEN -
Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.
HENRIK IBSEN -
Every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.
HENRIK IBSEN -
A forest bird never wants a cage.
HENRIK IBSEN -
If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
HENRIK IBSEN -
It is no use lying to one’s self.
HENRIK IBSEN -
There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.
HENRIK IBSEN -
But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.
HENRIK IBSEN -
You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
HENRIK IBSEN -
The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life – he first individualizes.
HENRIK IBSEN