Henrik Ibsen Men Quotations

Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.

Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrafice his honor for the one he loves. Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man

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.

I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.

The man-at-arms is the only man.

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

Helmer: "Before all else you are a wife and a mother." Nora: "That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being."

The strongest men are the most alone.

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - he first individualizes.

It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is 'himself'.

If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.

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.

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.

But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

...every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.

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 a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

A woman cannot be herself in modern society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess female conduct from a male standpoint.