“Dr. Stockmann. I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately--the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the hole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.”

“Dr. Stockmann: Yes, I can afford it now. Katherine tells me I earn almost as much as we spend. Peter Stockmann: Almost—yes!”

“There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.”

“Nora: It's true Torvald. When I lived at home with Papa, he used to tell me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinion. If I thought differently, I had to hide it from him, or he wouldn't have liked it. He called me his little doll, and he used to play with me just as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house -Helmer: That's no way to talk about our marriage!Nora [undisturbed]: I mean when I passed out of Papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything to suit your own tastes, and so I came to have the same tastes as yours.. or I pretended to. I'm not quite sure which.. perhaps it was a bit of both -- sometimes one and sometimes the other. Now that I come to look at it, I've lived here like a pauper -- simply from hand to mouth. I've lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. That was how you wanted it. You and Papa have committed a grievous sin against me: it's your fault that I've made nothing of my life.”

“However wretched I may feel, I want to prolong the agony as long as possible. All my patients are like that. And so are those who are morally diseased..”

“Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”

“HELMER: But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties?NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty?HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn't it your duty to your husband and children?NORA: I have another duty, just as sacred.HELMER: You can't have. What duty do you mean?NORA: My duty to myself.”