Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsenwas a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth20 March 1828
CitySkien, Norway
CountryNorway
So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.
There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.
Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
It is no use lying to one's self.
Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.
The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.
I'm inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.
It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
It is not for a care-free existence I am fighting, but for the possibility of devoting myself to the task which I believe and know has been laid upon me by God -- the work which seems to me more important and needful in Norway than any other, that of arousing the nation and leading it to think great thoughts.
It's a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.
The devil is compromise.
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?