Quotes by

Havelock Ellis

The place where optimism flourishes most is in the lunatic asylum. – Havelock Ellis

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. – Havelock Ellis

It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. – Havelock Ellis

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. – Havelock Ellis

However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks. – Havelock Ellis

Pain and death are a part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself. – Havelock Ellis

The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps. – Havelock Ellis

There is held to be no surer test of civilization than the increase per head of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcohol and tobacco are recognizable poisons, so that their consumption has only to be carried far enough to destroy civilization altogether. – Havelock Ellis

Charm – which means the power to effect work without employing brute force – is indispensable to women. Charm is a womans strength just as strength is a mans charm. – Havelock Ellis

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each others nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. – Havelock Ellis

The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human beings functions and activities. A life is beautiful and ideal or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship. – Havelock Ellis

Failing to find in women exactly the same kind of sexual emotions, as they find in themselves, men have concluded that there are none there at all. – Havelock Ellis

Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom. – Havelock Ellis

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success. – Havelock Ellis

In the early days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the sexes which shocked austere moralists. – Havelock Ellis

There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion. – Havelock Ellis

The romantic embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer. – Havelock Ellis

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge. – Havelock Ellis

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. – Havelock Ellis

Man lives by imagination. – Havelock Ellis