29 Quotations by Henrik Johan Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen
A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
A forest bird never wants a cage.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
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.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Do not use that foreign word ideals. We have that excellent native word lies.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
For a student has essentially the same task as the poet: to make clear to himself, and thereby to others, the temporal and eternal questions which are astir in the age and in the community to which he belongs.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
If I were to tell at this moment what has been the chief result of my stay abroad, I should say that it consisted in my having driven out of myself the aestheticism which had a great power over me – an isolated aestheticism with a claim to independent existence. Aestheticism of this kind seem to me now as a great curse to poetry as theology is to religion.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
In that second it dawned on me that I had been living here for eight years with a strange man and had borne him three children.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
It is only what we have inherited from our fathers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but they are dormant, all the same, and we can never b e rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
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 Johan Ibsen
Oh, why does everything I touch become mean and ludicrous? It's like a curse!
Henrik Johan Ibsen
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 in the midst of the struggle and says, I have it, merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
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 Johan Ibsen
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population – the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom amoungst us is the compact majority.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – they are the pillars of society.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
There are some people one loves best, and others whom one would almost always rather have as companions.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
To be yourself is to slay yourself.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?
Henrik Johan Ibsen
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Take the life - lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
The thing is, you see, that the strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
¿Qué es la belleza? Una convención, una moneda que tiene curso en un tiempo y en un lugar.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Buscar el yo en el poderío del oro es edificar sobre arena.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
El hombre más fuerte del mundo es el que está más solo.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Grande o pequeño, todo hombre es poeta si sabe ver el ideal, más allá de sus actos.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
La mayoría nunca tiene razón.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Las verdaderas columnas de la sociedad son la verdad y la libertad.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
No se graban tanto mil palabras como un solo hecho.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Nunca lleves tus mejores pantalones cuando salgas a luchar por la paz y la libertad.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Pueden prohibirme seguir mi camino, pueden intentar forzar mi voluntad. Pero no pueden impedirme que, en el fondo de mi alma, elija a una o a otra.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Un verdadero espíritu de rebeldía es aquel que busca la felicidad en esta vida.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
¡Qué cosa tan extraña es la felicidad! Nadie sabe por dónde ni cómo ni cuándo llega, y llega por caminos invisibles, a veces cuando ya no se le aguarda.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
¿Cuál es el primer deber del hombre? La respuesta es muy breve: ser un mismo.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Antes del matrimonio se considera el amor teóricamente; en el matrimonio se pasa a la práctica. Ahora bien, todos saben que las teorías no siempre concuerdan con la práctica.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
He descubierto que las raíces de nuestra vida moral están completamente podridas, que la base de nuestra sociedad está corrompida por la mentira.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
La belleza es el acuerdo entre el contenido y la forma.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
La vida podría ser bastante agradable si no llamasen a la puerta esos acreedores reclamando el cumplimiento de los ideales a pobres hombres como nosotros.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Nuestra sociedad es masculina, y hasta que no entre en ella la mujer no será humana.
Henrik Johan Ibsen
Perderlo todo es ganarlo todo, porque no se posee eternamente más que lo que se ha perdido.
