Pastor Manders?

MANDERS. Questions of that kind I must decline to discuss with you,
Mrs. Alving; you are far from being in the right frame of mind for
them. But that you dare to call your scruples "cowardly"--!

MRS. ALVING. Let me tell you what I mean. I am timid and
faint-hearted because of the ghosts that hang about me, and that I
can never quite shake off.

MANDERS. What do you say hangs about you?

MRS. ALVING. 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. 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.

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

MRS. ALVING. You are mistaken, my dear Pastor. It was you yourself
who set me thinking; and I thank you for it with all my heart.