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Henrik Ibsen Quotes
1828–1906 Norway
Henrik Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is considered one of the founders of Modernism in theatre.
Also known as: Ibsen, Ibsen, Henrik, An Enemy of the People, En folkefiende, Peer Gynt, Vildanden
Random Henrik Ibsen quote
72 quotes
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
Love's Comedy (1862)
Our common lust for life.
Hedda Gabler (1890)
Nora.Look here, Doctor Rank - you know you want to live.
A Doll's House (1879)
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 Wild Duck (1884)
I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind.
Ghosts (1881)
I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately - the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.
An Enemy of the People (1882)
Neither moral conceptions nor art-forms have an eternity before them. How much are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to? Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five?
Away with the State! I will take part in that revolution. Undermine the whole conception of a State, declare free choice and spiritual kinship to be the only all-important conditions of any union, and you will have the commencement of a liberty that is worth something.
I don't know whether you find also in your part of the world that there are certain people who go zealously snuffing about to smell out moral corruption, and, as soon as they have found some, put the person concerned into some lucrative position where they can keep their eye on him. Healthy natures are left out in the cold.
A Doll's House (1879)
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands still in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by so doing that he has just lost it.
Helmer: First and foremost, you are a wife and mother.
A Doll's House (1879)
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.
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