Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Havelock Ellis (British Essayist, Physician)

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) was a notable British physician, psychologist, and social reformer. He profoundly impacted contemporary perceptions of human sexuality. Through his groundbreaking research, Ellis challenged Victorian taboos surrounding sex, advocating for open discussions and sex education.

Born in Croydon, Surrey, to a seafaring family, Ellis traveled extensively in Australia and South America before pursuing medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. In 1891, Ellis married Edith Lees and became known for his numerous female followers, including the influential South African intellectual Olive Schreiner.

Rejecting societal fears and ignorance, Ellis viewed the sexual activity as a natural expression of love, seeking to dispel misconceptions that plagued Victorian society. His monumental work, Studies in the Psychology of Sex (7 vols., 1897–1928; 1936,) stirred immense controversy and was initially banned in Great Britain. However, the volumes were available in the United States and were restricted to the medical profession in the UK until 1935.

Additionally, Ellis served as the editor of the “Mermaid Series” of Old Dramatists in 1887, aiming to bring Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights to a broader audience. Among his other notable works are The Dance of Life (1923) and his autobiography, My Life (1940.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Havelock Ellis

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met along the way.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Philosophy

Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Thinking, Thought

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Civilization

Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Sex

The place where optimism flourishes most is in the lunatic asylum.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Optimism

A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Religion

There is nothing more fragile than civilization.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Civilization

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
Topics: Suicide

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Morality

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
—Havelock Ellis

No faith is our own that we have not arduously won.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Faith, Belief

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
Topics: Life and Living

The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Romance, Sex

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Obstacles, Difficulty

Every artist writes his own autobiography.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Arts, Artists, Art, Autobiography, One liners

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

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
—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
Topics: Dancing, Dance

There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Achievement, War

We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Consistency, Change

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Revolution, Civilization

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Jealousy, Envy

Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher’s credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Being Ourselves

The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Beauty, Absence

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Life, Balance, Letting Go

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
Topics: Drugs

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Genius

Charm – which means the power to effect work without employing brute force – is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman’s strength just as strength is a man’s charm.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Charm

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
Topics: Music

We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Criminals, Crime

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *