Ghosts quotes

It’s the Lord’s own rain, my girl.

It’s the devil’s rain, I say.

Lord, how you talk, Regina. Limps a step or two forward into the room. It’s just this as I wanted to say—

Do you feel better or happier for such reading?

I feel, so to speak, more secure.

That is strange. How do you mean?

Well, I seem to find explanation and confirmation of all sorts of things I myself have been thinking. For that is the wonderful part of it, Pastor Manders—there is really nothing new in these books, nothing but what most people think and believe.

Only most people either don’t formulate it to themselves, or else keep quiet about it.

Great heavens! Do you really believe that most people—?

Stands still. Right? Right! In such principles?

Here, in my loneliness, I have come to the same way of thinking, Pastor Manders. But I have never dared to say anything.

Well! now my boy shall speak for me.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.

What right have we human beings to happiness?

We have simply to do our duty, Mrs. Alving! And your duty was to hold firmly to the man you had once chosen, and to whom you were bound by the holiest ties.

—the regard you owed to your position, yes; and that I was a runaway wife.

One can never be too cautious with such unprincipled creatures.

My dear—Mrs. Alving, you know that is an absurd exaggeration—

What is the truth, then?

The truth is that my husband died just as dissolute as he had lived all his days.

Feeling after a chair. What do you say?

And you know what power Alving had of winning people’s hearts. Nobody seemed able to believe anything but good of him.

He was one of those people whose life does not bite upon their reputation.

But at last, Mr. Manders—for you must know the whole story—the most repulsive thing of all happened.

he dared not oppose me. It was then I sent Oswald away from home. He was nearly seven years old, and was beginning to observe and ask questions, as children do. That I could not bear.

It seemed to me the child must be poisoned by merely breathing the air of this polluted home.

That was why I sent him away. And now you can see, too, why he was never allowed to set foot inside his home so long as his father lived. No one knows what that cost me.

Just think of it—for a miserable three hundred dollars, to go and marry a fallen woman!

Then what have you to say of me? I went and married a fallen man.

Why—good heavens!—what are you talking about! A fallen man!

At the window.

Oh, that perpetual law and order! I often think that is what does all the mischief in this world of ours.

Mrs. Alving, that is a sinful way of talking.

Oh—ideals, ideals! If only I were not such a coward!

Do not despise ideals, Mrs. Alving; they will avenge themselves cruelly.

Take Oswald’s case: he, unfortunately, seems to have few enough ideals as it is; but I can see that his father stands before him as an ideal.

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.

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.

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.

Aha—here we have the fruits of your reading. And pretty fruits they are, upon my word! Oh, those horrible, revolutionary, freethinking books!

Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though ghosts rose up before me.

But I almost think we are all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders.

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.

Yes—when you forced me under the yoke of what you called duty and obligation; when you lauded as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against as something loathsome. It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrines.

I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.

Softly, with emotion. And was that the upshot of my life’s hardest battle?

Softly, with emotion. And was that the upshot of my life’s hardest battle?

Call it rather your most pitiful defeat.

It was my greatest victory, Helen—the victory over myself.

Well, you see, Engstrand, I have a question to put to you first. Are you in the right frame of mind for such a meeting! Do you feel your conscience clear and at ease?

Oh, God help us, your Reverence! we’d better not talk about conscience.

Yes, that is just what we must talk about. What have you to answer?

It only shows how excessively careful one ought to be in judging one’s fellow creatures. But what a heartfelt joy it is to ascertain that one has been mistaken! Don’t you think so?

I think you are, and will always be, a great baby, Manders.

Laying her two hands upon his shoulders. And I say that I have half a mind to put my arms round your neck, and kiss you.

I didn’t understand either, and begged him to explain himself more clearly. And then the old cynic said—Clenching his fist. Oh—!

He said, “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.”

Rising slowly. The sins of the fathers—!

I only mean that here people are brought up to believe that work is a curse and a punishment for sin, and that life is something miserable, something it would be best to have done with, the sooner the better.

“A vale of tears,” yes; and we certainly do our best to make it one.

But in the great world people won’t hear of such things. There, nobody really believes such doctrines any longer. There, you feel it a positive bliss and ecstasy merely to draw the breath of life.

But in the great world people won’t hear of such things. There, nobody really believes such doctrines any longer.

There, you feel it a positive bliss and ecstasy merely to draw the breath of life.

Mother, have you noticed that everything I have painted has turned upon the joy of life?—always, always upon the joy of life?—light and sunshine and glorious air and faces radiant with happiness. That is why I’m afraid of remaining at home with you.

Afraid? What are you afraid of here, with me?

I’m afraid lest all my instincts should be warped into ugliness.

Looks steadily at him. Do you think that is what would happen?

What makes you think so?

Everything will burn. All that recalls father’s memory is doomed. Here am I, too, burning down.

Regina starts and looks at him.

Slowly.

I saw only this one thing: that your father was a broken-down man before you were born.

Softly. Ah—! He rises and walks away to the window.

No, that I can’t.

A poor girl must make the best of her young days, or she’ll be left out in the cold before she knows where she is.

And I, too, have the joy of life in me, Mrs. Alving!

Looks hard at her.

I think you might have brought me up as a gentleman’s daughter, ma’am; it would have suited me better.

Tosses her head. But pooh—what does it matter! With a bitter side glance at the corked bottle. I may come to drink champagne with gentlefolks yet.

Yes, cannot I, Oswald?

Oh, I could almost bless the illness that has driven you home to me. For I see very plainly that you are not mine: I have to win you.

Impatiently. Yes yes yes; all these are just so many phrases. You must remember that I am a sick man, Mother. I can’t be much taken up with other people; I have enough to do thinking about myself.