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A Doll’s House quotes

14 quotes from A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #2542 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.

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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.

— Nora · Act III

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But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.

— Helmer · Act III

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It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.

— Nora · Act III

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I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me.

— Nora · Act III

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Duties to myself.

— Nora · Act III

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But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa’s doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.

— Nora · Act III

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Yes—you see there are some people one loves best, and others whom one would almost always rather have as companions.

— Nora · Act II

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

— Nora · Act III

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There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.

— Helmer · Act I

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Because such an atmosphere of lies infects and poisons the whole life of a home. Each breath the children take in such a house is full of the germs of evil.

— Helmer · Act I

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It is no use lying to one’s self.

— Rank · Act II

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A wonderful thing is going to happen!

— Nora · Act II

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When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now—I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit of wreckage.

— Krogstad · Act III

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Oh well, one can’t have anything in this life without paying for it.

— Rank · Act III

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Chapter labels are the reader’s own headings. More: quotes from Henrik Ibsen’s books.

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