The truth is that there are two men in Ibsen – an idealist, exalted to the verge of sentimentality, and a critic, hard, inexorable, remorseless, to the verge of cynicism. What we call his “social philosophy” is a modus vivendi arrived at between them. Both agree in repudiating “marriage for love”;.

— Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen Quotes

ALLMERS. No. For it is here, in the life of earth, that we living beings are at home.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

Let others emulate the eagle’s flight, Life in the lowly plains may be as bright.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald.

— Henrik Ibsen

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 – –.

— Henrik Ibsen

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 – –.

— Henrik Ibsen

People so easily forget their past selves.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

Troll, be thyself – and thyself alone!

— Henrik Ibsen

I have had a delightfully lonely time of it – plenty of leisure to think and think about things.

— Henrik Ibsen

Out there, where the sky shines, humans say: “To thyself be true”. In here, trolls say: “Be true to yourself – ish.” – Peer Gynt.

— Henrik Ibsen

I can see him already – with vine-leaves in his hair – flushed and fearless.

— Henrik Ibsen

What right have we human beings to happiness?

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen

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.

— Henrik Ibsen
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