John Gabriel Borkman Quotes

“You are a murderer! You have committed the
one mortal sin!
You have killed the love-life in me. Do
you understand what that means? The Bible speaks of a mysterious
sin for which there is no forgiveness. I have never understood
what it could be; but now I understand. The great, unpardonable
sin is to murder the love-life in a human soul.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Nicht Mord. Nicht Diebstahl, Raub oder nächtlicher Einbruch – auch Meineid nicht. Denn das alles sind ja Dinge, die man meist Leuten antut, die man haßt oder die einem gleichgültig sind und einen nichts angehen. […] Das Infamste von allem – das ist, wenn der Freund das Vertrauen des Freundes missbraucht.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Pity! Ha, ha! I have never known
pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If
a poor starved child came into my kitchen, shivering, and crying,
and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it.
I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it
at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be
satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I
remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren
desert within me--and without me too!”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Oh, we are all of us run over, sometime or other in life. The thing is to jump up again, and let no one see you are hurt.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world—out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew—higher than ever before—in spite of all that lay between.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Borkman: Dann haben wir uns gegenseitig etwas vorgemacht. Und uns selber haben wir vielleicht auch etwas vorgemacht – beide.
Foldal: Ja, John Gabriel, aber ist das denn nicht im Grunde das Wesen der Freundschaft?
Borkman (lächelt bitter): Doch, doch, lügen und betrügen – das ist Freundschaft. Da hast du recht. Diese Erfahrung habe ich schon einmal in meinem Leben gemacht.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN stands with his hands behind his back, beside
the piano, listening to FRIDA FOLDAL, who is playing the last
bars of the "Danse Macabre.


BORKMAN.
Can you guess where I first heard tones like these?

FRIDA.
[Looking up at him.] No, Mr. Borkman.

BORKMAN.
It was down in the mines.

FRIDA.
[Not understanding.] Indeed? Down in the mines?

BORKMAN.
I am a miner's son, you know. Or perhaps you did not know?

FRIDA.
No, Mr. Borkman.

BORKMAN.
A miner's son. And my father used sometimes to take me with
him into the mines. The metal sings down there.

FRIDA.
Really? Sings?

BORKMAN.
[Nodding.] When it is loosened. The hammer-strokes that loosen
it are the midnight bell clanging to set it free; and that is why
the metal sings--in its own way--for gladness.

FRIDA.
Why does it do that, Mr. Borkman?

BORKMAN.
It wants to come up into the light of day and serve mankind.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Frida. So after all, it is not for nothing that I was born a poet. For now she is going forth into the great wide world, that I once yearned so passionately to see. Little Frida sets out in a splendid covered sledge with silver bells on the harness——”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“You must not think, Mrs. Borkman, that I haven't said the same to him. I have laid my whole life before him. Again and again I have reminded him that I am seven years older than he——”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“It is only through his present and his future that a man can atone for his past.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“You have cheated me of a mother's joy and happiness in life—and of a mother's sorrows and tears as well. And perhaps that is the heaviest part of the loss to me.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“You have done to death all the gladness of my life in me.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“The great, unpardonable sin is to murder the love-life in a human soul.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Life is not always what one holds dearest.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“If you have no faith in yourself, you are on the downward path indeed.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Friendship means—deception. I have learnt that once before.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“So long as you believed in me, I believed in you.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Exceptional men are above precedents.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“It is such a blessed, beneficial thought that here or there in the
world, somewhere, far away—the true woman exists after all.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“The most infamous of crimes is a friend's betrayal of his friend's confidence.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“I feel like a Napoleon who has been maimed in his first battle.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman

“Å de kvinner, de forderver og forvansker livet for oss. Forkvakler hele vår skjebne, hele vår seiersgang.”
― Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman