44 Quotes By Havelock Ellis


The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing.
Havelock Ellis on age

The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person and in the end they unite.
Havelock Ellis on architecture

Every artist writes his own autobiography.
Havelock Ellis on art

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Havelock Ellis on art

The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person and in the end they unite.
Havelock Ellis on art

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it.
Havelock Ellis on art

The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
Havelock Ellis on beauty

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
Havelock Ellis on change

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

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?
Havelock Ellis on dreams

Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life.
Havelock Ellis on education

For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period.
Havelock Ellis on education

A sublime faith in human imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray.
Havelock Ellis on faith

The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's 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 on family

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.
Havelock Ellis on happiness

The average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but is usually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisation that make it enjoyable.
Havelock Ellis on home

Man lives by imagination.
Havelock Ellis on imagination

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

Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life.
Havelock Ellis on knowledge

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 on knowledge