What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
ALLMERS. No. For it is here, in the life of earth, that we living beings are at home.
NORA: No; only merry. And you were always so friendly and kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a nursery. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa’s doll-child. And my children were, in their turn, my dolls. I was exceedingly delighted when you played with me, just as children were whenever I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.
Oh, we are all of us run over, sometime or other in life. The thing is to jump up again, and let no one see you are hurt.
But if you are to die, live first! Come forth With me into the glory of God’s earth! Soon, soon the gilded cage will claim its prize. The Lady thrives there, but the Woman dies, And I love nothing but the Woman in you.
Let others emulate the eagle’s flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.
About the white and shining milky way? Man may not there the milk of fortune skim, Nor is the butter of it meant for him.
I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald.
Frida. So after all, it is not for nothing that I was born a poet. For now she is going forth into the great wide world, that I once yearned so passionately to see. Little Frida sets out in a splendid covered sledge with silver bells on the harness – –.
You must not think, Mrs. Borkman, that I haven’t said the same to him. I have laid my whole life before him. Again and again I have reminded him that I am seven years older than he – –.
People so easily forget their past selves.
EINAR HUK. Then we shall be free. We shall have no more foreign masters, and can choose ourselves a king, as the Swedes have done before us.
I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are – or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.
Troll, be thyself – and thyself alone!
I have had a delightfully lonely time of it – plenty of leisure to think and think about things.
Out there, where the sky shines, humans say: “To thyself be true”. In here, trolls say: “Be true to yourself – ish.” – Peer Gynt.
I can see him already – with vine-leaves in his hair – flushed and fearless.
What right have we human beings to happiness?
When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now – I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit of wreckage.
That all this I have to make up for, to pay for – not in money, but in human happiness. And not with my own happiness only, but with other people’s too.
No, it is the small losses in life that cut one to the heart – the loss of all that other people look upon as almost nothing.