What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
—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
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Civilization, Revolution
The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Romance, Sex
The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Civilization
Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Dreams
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
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.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Writing
The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Difficulty, Obstacles
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Optimism
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Letting Go, Balance, Life
In the degree in which I have been privileged to know the intimate secrets of hearts, I ever more realize how great a part is played in the lives of men and women by some little concealed germ of abnormality. For the most part they are occupied in the task of stifling and crushing those germs, treating them like weeds in their gardens. There is another and better way, even though more difficult and more perilous. Instead of trying to suppress the weeds that can never be killed, they may be cultivated into useful or beautiful flowers. For it is impossible to conceive any impulse in a human heart which cannot be transformed into Truth or into Beauty or into Love.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Education
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
There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: War, Achievement
What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Morality
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
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
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
However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Danger, Risk
Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Thought, Thinking
A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Religion
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Arts, Art, Artists, One liners, Autobiography
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
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
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Life
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Absence, Beauty
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
Topics: Fresh
Men who know themselves are no longer fools; they stand on the threshold of the Door of Wisdom.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Foolishness, Self-Discovery, Fools
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
—Havelock Ellis
Topics: Consistency, Change
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
- Ramsay MacDonald British Head of State
- Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
- Robert Owen British Social Reformer
- Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
- Frederic William Farrar British Theological Writer
- C. Northcote Parkinson British Historian
- Margaret Thatcher British Head of State
- Audrey Hepburn Belgian-British Actress
- Arnold Bennett British Novelist
Leave a Reply