Quotes · verified word for word in the text
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.
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
But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.
— Helmer · Act III
It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
— Nora · Act III
I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me.
— Nora · Act III
Duties to myself.
— Nora · Act III
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
Yes—you see there are some people one loves best, and others whom one would almost always rather have as companions.
— Nora · Act II
You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
— Nora · Act III
There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.
— Helmer · Act I
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
It is no use lying to one’s self.
— Rank · Act II
A wonderful thing is going to happen!
— Nora · Act II
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
Oh well, one can’t have anything in this life without paying for it.
— Rank · Act III