A Doll's House quotes Flashcards
Nora! Just like a woman. Seriously though, Nora, you know
what I think about these things. No debts! Never borrow!
There’s always something inhibited, something unpleasant,
about a home built on credit and borrowed money.
Torvald
I would never dream of doing anything you didn’t want me
to.
Nora
Oh, what a glorious feeling it is, knowing you’ve got a nice,
safe job, and a good fat income.
Torvald
Oh, sometimes I was so tired, so tired. But it was
tremendous fun all the same, sitting there working and
earning money like that. Almost like being a man.
Nora
Just think how a man with a thing like that on his
conscience will always be having to lie and cheat and
dissemble; he can never drop the mask, not even with his own
wife and children. And the children—that’s the most terrible
part of it, Nora… A fog of lies like that in a household, and it
spreads disease and infection to every part of it. Every breath
the children take in that kind of house is reeking evil germs.
Torvald
When a poor girl’s been in trouble she must make the best
of things.
The Nursemaid
You see Torvald is so terribly in love with me that he says
he wants me all to himself. When we first married, it even
used to make him sort of jealous if I only as much as mentioned
any of my old friends back home. So of course I stopped doing
it.
Nora
A man’s better at coping with these things than a woman…
Nora
If it ever got around that the new manager had been talked
over by his wife… As long as the little woman gets her own
stubborn way…! Do you want me to make myself a laughing
stock in the office? Give people the idea that I am susceptible to
any kind of outside pressure? You can imagine how soon I’d feel
the consequences of that!
Torvald
But my dear darling Nora, you are dancing as though your
life depended on it.
Torvald
What else is there to understand, apart from the old, old
story? A heartless woman throws a man over the moment
something more profitable offers itself.
Nils Krogstad
Without work I couldn’t live. All my life I have worked, for
as long as I can remember; that has always been my one
great joy. But now I’m completely alone in the world, and
feeling horribly empty and forlorn. There’s no pleasure in
working only for yourself. Nils, give me somebody and
something to work for.
Kristine
Helmer must know everything. This unhappy secret must
come out. Those two must have the whole thing out
between them. All this secrecy and deception, it just can’t go on.
Kristine
His suffering and his loneliness seemed almost to provide
a background of dark cloud to the sunshine of our lives.
Torvald
I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Daddy’s
doll child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I
thought it was fun when you came and played with me, just as
they thought it was fun when I went to play with them. That’s
been our marriage, Torvald.
Nora
