Henrik Ibsen Quotes

To live is – to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing.

Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.

It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.

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.

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.

An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty’s sake.

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.

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.