Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)
Norwegian playwright who was largely responsible for the rise of the modern realistic drama.
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.
I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
God bless thee, bride of my life's dawn, Where'er I be, to nobler deed thou'lt wake me.
A forest bird never wants a cage.
Our common lust for life.
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish. The great secret of action and victory is to be capable of living your life without ideals. Such is the sum of the whole world's wisdom.
Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.
Neither moral concepts nor art forms can expect to live forever. How much are we obliged to hold on to? Who can guarantee that 2 plus 2 don't add up to 5 on Jupiter?
I feel myself like God's lost prodigal;
I left Him for the world's delusive charms.
With mild reproof He wooed me to his arms;
And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall,
Prepares a banquet for the son restored,
And makes His noblest creature my reward.
From this time forth I'll never leave that Light, —
But stand its armed defender in the fight;
Nothing shall part us, and our life shall prove
A song of glory to triumphant love!
There is a big black hat and it makes you invisible. Have you heard of that hat? You put it on and then no one can see you.
When we dead awaken. ... We see that we have never lived.
Erring soul of man — if thou wast indeed forced to err, it shall surely be accounted to thee for good on that great day when the Mighty One shall descend in the clouds to judge the living dead and the dead who are yet alive!
Tabets alt din vinding skabte —
Evigt ejes kun det tabte!
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. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be 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. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.
I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. You are very fond, sir, of talking about the consideration we owe to the community; it seems to me, however, that the community has its duties too. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions — to destroy.