"Always do that, wild ducks do. They shoot to the bottom as deep as they can get, sir — and bite themselves fast in the tangle and seaweed — and all the devil's own mess that grows down there. And they never come up again."

"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."

"Forget that foreign word "ideals." We have that good old native word: "lies.""

"Tar De livsløgnen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, så tar De lykken fra ham med det samme."

"Our common lust for life."

"Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything."

"Back he'll come...With vine leaves in his hair. Flushed and confident."

"Mrs. Elvsted: You have some hidden motive in this, Hedda! Hedda: Yes, I have. I want for once in my life to have power to mold a human destiny. Mrs. Elvsted: Have you not the power? Hedda: I have not—and never had it. Mrs. Elvsted: Not your husband's? Hedda: Do you think it's worth the trouble? Oh, if only you could understand how poor I am. And fate has made you so rich!"

"Everything I touch seems destined to turn into something mean and farcical."

"Men, gud sig forbarme,—sligt noget gír man da ikke!"

"The younger generation will come knocking at my door."

"A forest bird never wants a cage."

"He who possesses liberty otherwise than as an aspiration possesses it soulless, dead. 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 still in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by so doing that he has just lost it. Now this very contentedness in the possession of a dead liberty is characteristic of the so-called State, and, as I have said, it is not a good characteristic. No doubt the franchise, self-taxation, etc., are benefits — but to whom? To the citizen, not to the individual. Now, reason does not imperatively demand that the individual should be a citizen. Far from it. The State is the curse of the individual. With what is Prussia's political strength bought? With the absorption of the individual in the political and geographical idea. The waiter is the best soldier. And on the other hand, take the Jewish people, the aristocracy of the human race — how is it they have kept their place apart, their poetical halo, amid surroundings of coarse cruelty? By having no State to burden them. Had they remained in Palestine, they would long ago have lost their individuality in the process of their State's construction, like all other nations. Away with the State! I will take part in that revolution. Undermine the whole conception of a State, declare free choice and spiritual kinship to be the only all-important conditions of any union, and you will have the commencement of a liberty that is worth something. Changes in forms of government are pettifogging affairs — a degree less or a degree more, mere foolishness. The State has its root in time, and will ripe and rot in time. Greater things than it will fall — religion, for example. Neither moral conceptions nor art-forms have an eternity before them. How much are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to? Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five?"

"People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it."

"When we dead awaken. … We see that we have never lived."

"The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated. And if, as in the case of Zola, Ibsen and Tolstoy, they compelled their time to accept them, it was due to their extraordinary genius and even more so to the awakening and seeking of a small minority for new truths, to whom these men were the inspiration and intellectual support. Yet even to this day Ibsen is unpopular, while Poe, Whitman and Strindberg have never "arrived.""

"Luftslotte,—de er så nemme at ty ind i, de. Og nemme at bygge også."

"There are three Empires. First there is the Empire which was founded on the tree of knowledge. Then there is the Empire founded on the tree of the Cross. The third is still a secret Empire which will be founded on the tree of knowledge and the tree of the Cross — brought together."

"That power which circumstances placed in my hands, and which is an emanation of divinity, I am conscious of having used to the best of my skill. I have never wittingly wronged any one. For this campaign there were good and sufficient reasons; and if some should think that I have not fulfilled all expectations, they ought in justice to reflect that there is a mysterious power without us, which in a great measure governs the issue of human undertakings."

"Erring soul of man — if thou wast indeed forced to err, it shall surely be accounted to thee for good on that great day when the Mighty One shall descend in the clouds to judge the living dead and the dead who are yet alive!"

"At leve er — krig med trolde i hjertets og hjernens hvælv. At digte, — det er at holde dommedag over sig selv."

"The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish. The great secret of action and victory is to be capable of living your life without ideals. Such is the sum of the whole world's wisdom."