I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is. … When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see if what...

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Don’t use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.”

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

Oh, life would be all right if we didn’t have to put up with these damned creditors who keep pestering us with the demands of their ideals

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see clearly a second time

It was love for me – her kind of love – that drove her into the mill-race.

To live is – to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life – He first individualizes

I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced...

Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.

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.

Some day, youth will come here and thunder on my door, and force its way in to me.

One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

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

The devil is compromise

Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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

Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness

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...

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.

I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are–or, at all events, that I must try and become one.

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

Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it… it’s just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A...

When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not...

Sleep, O sleep, my dearest boy. / I will cradle you, I will guard you.