Top 160 Henrik Ibsen Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Henrik Ibsen

Featured in: Strong Quotes, Loneliness Quotes, Lonely Quotes, Solitude Quotes

2. “The strong must learn to be lonely.”

— Henrik Ibsen

Featured in: Strong Quotes, Lonely Quotes

3. “A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.”

— Henrik Ibsen

4. “A forest bird never wants a cage.”

— Henrik Ibsen

5. “There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.”

— Henrik Ibsen

6. “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.”

— Henrik Ibsen

Featured in: Procrastination Quotes

7. “What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.”

— Henrik Ibsen

8. “The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.”

— Henrik Ibsen

9. “Nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will.”

— Henrik Ibsen

10. “A friend married is a friend lost.”

— Henrik Ibsen

11. “A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.”

— Henrik Ibsen

12. “The greatest victory is defeat.”

— Henrik Ibsen

13. “You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.”

— Henrik Ibsen

14. “If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.”

— Henrik Ibsen

15. “Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.”

— Henrik Ibsen

16. “It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.”

— Henrik Ibsen

Featured in: Fun Quotes

17. “I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.”

— Henrik Ibsen

18. “Live, work, act. Don’t sit here and brood.”

— Henrik Ibsen

19. “You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.”

— Henrik Ibsen

20. “Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.”

— Henrik Ibsen

21. “The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority.”

— Henrik Ibsen

22. “NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I’m to get to know myself and the world outside. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.”

— Henrik Ibsen

23. “I am not going to let myself be beaten to the ground by the dread of what may happen. Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm.”

— Henrik Ibsen

24. “The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.”

— Henrik Ibsen

25. “Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.”

— Henrik Ibsen

26. “To live is to war with trolls.”

— Henrik Ibsen

27. “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?”

— Henrik Ibsen

28. “Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game is won.”

— Henrik Ibsen

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

— Henrik Ibsen

30. “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.””

— Henrik Ibsen

31. “Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.”

— Henrik Ibsen

32. “To live is to war with trolls in heart and woul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.”

— Henrik Ibsen

33. “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.”

— Henrik Ibsen

34. “It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.”

— Henrik Ibsen

35. “I believe that, before all else, I’m a human being, no less than you.”

— Henrik Ibsen

36. “Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing.”

— Henrik Ibsen

37. “In great memories there lies the seed of growth.”

— Henrik Ibsen

38. “In the decisive moment I won the victory over myself. I chose to live. And believe me, it takes courage to choose life under those circumstances.”

— Henrik Ibsen

39. “Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man.”

— Henrik Ibsen

40. “Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.”

— Henrik Ibsen

41. “The starving poet business is no good nowadays.”

— Henrik Ibsen

42. “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.”

— Henrik Ibsen

43. “Many a man can save himself if he admits he’s done wrong and takes his punishment.”

— Henrik Ibsen

44. “I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.”

— Henrik Ibsen

45. “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.”

— Henrik Ibsen

46. “The spectacles of experience; through them you will see clearly a second time.”

— Henrik Ibsen

47. “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.”

— Henrik Ibsen

48. “Each bird must sing with his own throat.”

— Henrik Ibsen

49. “That is the only relation in life that is not subject to the law of change.”

— Henrik Ibsen

50. “An unromantic poem I mean to make, of one who only lives for duty’s sake.”

— Henrik Ibsen