Literary Birthday – 20 March – Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 and died on 23 May 1906.

Henrik Ibsen Quotes

1. If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.
2. To live is to war with trolls.
3. 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?
4. The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
5. The worst that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others.
6. Writing has … been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
7. 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.
8. It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.
9. 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.
10. A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.

Henrik Ibsen was 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 the theatre. His plays include A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: ‘Ibsen was in the forefront of those early modern authors whom one could refer to as the great disturbers; he belongs with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William Blake. Ibsen wrote plays about mostly prosaic and commonplace persons, but from them he elicited insights of devastating directness, great subtlety, and occasional flashes of rare beauty.’ His works are strongly identified with both the humanist and feminist social movements.

Source for image: Eilif Peterssen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henrik_Ibsen_av_Eilif_Peterssen_1895.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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