Havelock Ellis quotes - page 3

Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments. (Havelock Ellis)
At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Havelock Ellis
A sublime faith in human imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray. View quote
Havelock Ellis
I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Had there been a lunatic asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on the pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him, and everything that happened after could but have confirmed the diagnosis. View quote
Havelock Ellis
The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Man lives by imagination. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom. (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. View quote
Havelock Ellis
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Imagination is a poor substitute for experience. View quote
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. View quote
Havelock Ellis
Mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. View quote
Havelock Ellis
We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization. View quote
Havelock Ellis
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else. View quote
Havelock Ellis
The romantic embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer. View quote
Havelock Ellis
So far as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense new provinces. View quote
Havelock Ellis