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You philosophers can reason black into white.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to George Brandes, Feb. 17, 1871
There are actually moments when the whole history of the world appears to me like one great shipwreck, and the only important thing seems to be to save one's self.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to George Brandes, Sep. 24, 1871
Courage ... oh yes! If only one had that ... then life might be livable, in spite of everything.
HENRIK IBSEN, Hedda Gabbler
- A thousand words can't
- make the mark a single deed will leave.
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
HENRIK IBSEN, Love's Comedy
A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
HENRIK IBSEN, An Enemy of the People
When we dead awaken.... We see that we have never lived.
HENRIK IBSEN, When We Dead Awaken
The state has its root in Time: it will have its culmination in Time. Greater things than it will fall; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of morality nor those of art are eternal. To how much are we really obliged to pin our faith? Who will vouch for it that two and two do not make five in Jupiter?
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to George Brandes, Feb. 17, 1871
The whole race is on the wrong track; that is the trouble. Or is there really anything tenable in the present situation -- with its unattainable ideals, etc? The whole succession of human generations remind me of a young shoemaker who has forsaken his last and gone on the stage. We have made a fiasco both in the heroic and the lover roles. The only parts in which we have shown a little talent are the naively comic; but with our more highly developed self-consciousness we shall no longer be fitted even for that.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to George Brandes, Sep. 24, 1871
My domain is not an extensive one, but within it I do my best.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to George Brandes, Jul. 23, 1872
As long as a people considers it more important to build meeting-houses than theatres, as long as it is readier to support the Zulu Mission than the Art Museum, art cannot really thrive, cannot even be considered as of immediate necessity. I do not think it is of much use to plead the cause of art with arguments derived from its own nature, which with us is still so little understood, or rather so thoroughly misunderstood. What is needed first of all with us is to fall upon and eradicate all that gloomy medieval monasticism which narrows the view and stupefies the mind. My opinion is that at the present time it is of no use to wield one's weapons for art; one must simply turn them against what is hostile to art. First clear this away, and then we can build.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to Lorentz Dietrichson, Dec. 19, 1879
I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to Georg Brandes, Jan. 3, 1882
Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.
HENRIK IBSEN, A Doll's House
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.
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society.
HENRIK IBSEN, The Pillars of Society
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.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to Georg Brandes, Feb. 17, 1871
It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.
HENRIK IBSEN, Hedda Gabler
Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
HENRIK IBSEN, The Pillars of Society
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.
HENRIK IBSEN, When We Dead Awaken
A forest bird never wants a cage.
HENRIK IBSEN, The Master Builder
Forget that foreign word "ideals." We have that good old native word: "lies."
HENRIK IBSEN, The Wild Duck
- Whether I pound or am being pounded,
- all the same there will be moaning!
To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?
You don't get nothing for nothing in this life.
HENRIK IBSEN, A Doll's House
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
HENRIK IBSEN, Love's Comedy
A political party--it's like a sausage grinder; it grinds all the heads up together into one mash, and then it turns them out, link by link, into fatheads and meatheads!
HENRIK IBSEN, An Enemy of the People
The struggle for liberty is nothing but the constant active appropriation of the idea of liberty. He who possesses liberty otherwise than as an aspiration possesses it soulless, dead. 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.
HENRIK IBSEN, letter to Georg Brandes, Feb. 17, 1871
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