Havelock Quotes & Sayings

On the threshold of the moral world we meet the idea of Freedom, 'one of the weightiest concepts man has ever formed,' once a dogma, in the course of time a hypothesis, now in the eyes of many a fiction, yet we cannot do without it, even although we may be firmly convinced that our acts are determined by laws that cannot be broken. — Havelock Ellis

Dreams are real while they last. Can we say more of life? — Havelock Ellis

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

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

The modesty of women, which, in its most primitive form among animals, is based on sexual periodicity, is, with that periodicity, an essential condition of courtship. — Havelock Ellis

To make a mountain out of a mole-hill. — 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. — Havelock Ellis

To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach. — Havelock Ellis

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

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

We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves. — Havelock Ellis

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

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

Einstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted. — Havelock Ellis

Here, where we reach the sphere of mathematics, we are among processes which seem to some the most inhuman of all human activities and the most remote from poetry. Yet it is here that the artist has the fullest scope of his imagination. — Havelock Ellis

The mother is the child's supreme parent. — Havelock Ellis

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

No practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.
-Lord Havelock Vetinari- — Terry Pratchett

Of woman as a real human being, with sexual needs and sexual responsibilities, morality has often known nothing. — Havelock Ellis

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

Both Ruth and Ted visited him together and in separate sessions. — Walter Terry

Doors and corners are always dangerous, because you're moving into something without being sure what's there. By the time you see the enemy, you're exposed to them." "Sir?" Havelock — James S.A. Corey

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

The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer. — Havelock Ellis

Over the years, I have become convinced that Hellenism as a culture represents not a static condition of uniform sublimity mysteriously achieved and maintained as an effect of some racial advantage. Rather it should be understood as an evolving process, governed by a dynamic of change, as both language and thought underwent transformational alteration caused by a transition from orality to literacy. The instrument of change is discerned to be the invention of the Greek alphabet, at a quite late stage in the history of developing cultures. — Eric A. Havelock

The conflict of forces and the struggle of opposing wills are of the essence of our universe and alone hold it together. — Havelock Ellis

The husband - by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition - regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity. — Havelock Ellis

All progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful because alive and are now false because dead. — Havelock Ellis

What we call 'morals' is simply blind obedience to words of command. — Havelock Ellis

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

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime
and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis. — Sigmund Freud

Man lives by imagination. — Havelock Ellis

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

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent. — Havelock Ellis

Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life. — Havelock Ellis

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself. — Havelock Ellis

Heroes exterminate each other for the benefit of people who are not heroes. — Havelock Ellis

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

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book. — Evelyn Waugh

Aesthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual emotion; from the lover's point of view many things are beautiful which are unbeautiful from the point of view of him who is not a lover, and the greater the degree to which the lover is swayed by his passion the greater the extent to which his normal aesthetic standard is liable to be modified. — Havelock Ellis

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great. — Havelock Ellis

The reactor had gone on Aten Base, his partner and supervisor had both panicked, and Havelock remembered the overwhelming fear in his own gut. When the riots had started on Ceres after the ice hauler Canterbury had been destroyed, his partner had been more weary than fearful, and Havelock had faced the situation with the same grim resignation. When the Ebisu had been quarantined for nipahvirus, his boss had been energized - almost elated - running the ship like a puzzle that had to be solved, and Havelock had been caught up in the pleasure of doing an important thing well. — James S.A. Corey

One can know nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how to take. — Havelock Ellis

The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought. — Havelock Ellis

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

The aesthetic pleasure of dance is a secondary reflection of the primary, vital joy of courtship. — Havelock Ellis

Life is livable because we know that wherever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions towards us by an almost instinctive network of taboos. — Havelock Ellis

Sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. — Havelock Ellis

No act can be quite so intimate as the sexual embrace. — Havelock Ellis

The mother is really a more immediate parent than the father because one is born from the mother, and the first experience of any infant is the mother. — Havelock Ellis

Starting in 1897, Henry Havelock Ellis devoted six volumes to it: his pioneering Studies in the Psychology of Sex, sprinkled with case studies of unexpected explicitness and perversity. One memorable phrase from volume four, Sexual Selection in Man: the contact of a dog's tongue with her mouth alone afterward sufficed to evoke sexual pleasure. — Erik Larson

The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. — Havelock Ellis

Could it be argued that if the Chinese revolution seems to be a response to the needs of rural society, whereas the Russian is an urbanized phenomenon, this difference corresponds to that which exists between the users of two different forms of written communication, the one archaic, the other alphabetic? — Eric A. Havelock

Imagination is a poor substitute for experience. — Havelock Ellis

Well," Marwick said. "It's good to recall that wherever people start, whatever they bring with them, humanity can still pull together in heavy weather." Havelock shrugged. Koenen's voice was still fresh in his memory, and Williams drifting flatlined and dead. Naomi Nagata in her cell. The Belter engineer whose locker people had been pissing in. The shuttle he'd rigged as a weapon. Jesus, he felt bad enough about Williams. He could barely imagine what it would have been like if he'd deployed the weaponized shuttle. "Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. These people could just as easily have gone down with their teeth in each other's throats. That happens too. It's just the folks that go that way aren't around to write the history books." "Amen, — James S.A. Corey

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

Am I destined for hell for my sin? # — Steven Havelock

Courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of sexual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for sexual intercourse. The play of courtship cannot, therefore, be considered to be definitely brought to an end by the ceremony of marriage; it may more properly be regarded as the natural preliminary to every act of coitus. — Havelock Ellis

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men. — Havelock Ellis

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. — 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

The largely objective character of beauty is further indicated by the fact that to a considerable extent beauty is the expression of health. A well and harmoniously developed body, tense muscles, an elastic and finely toned skin, bright eyes, grace and animation of carriage- all these things which are essential to beauty are the conditions of health. — Havelock Ellis

palpable. Havelock shifted slightly, pushing himself higher in — James S.A. Corey

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

The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations. — Havelock Ellis

The sexual regions constitute a particularly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent display required for sexual allurement. This end is far more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal among animals as well as in man. — 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. — Havelock Ellis

Those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest assured that the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity. — Havelock Ellis

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

Every artist writes his own autobiography. — Havelock Ellis

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

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

Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet toits god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought. — Havelock Ellis

Reproduction is so primitive and fundamental a function of vital organisms that the mechanism by which it is assured is highly complex and not yet clearly understood. It is not necessarily connected with sex, nor is sex necessarily connected with reproduction. — Havelock Ellis

Sure, boss," Havelock said. "Cool as November, smooth as China silk. — James S.A. Corey

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

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

There can be no sexual love without lust; but, on the other hand, until the currents of lust in the organism have been irradiatedas to affect other parts of the psychic organism
at the least the affections and the social feelings
it is not yet sexual love. Lust, the specific sexual impulse, is indeed the primary and essential element in this synthesis, for it alone is adequate to the end of reproduction, not only in animals but in men. But it is not until lust is expanded and irradiated that it develops into the exquisite and enthralling flower of love. — 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

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

The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves. — Havelock Ellis

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way. — 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

A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest. — Havelock Ellis

When love is suppressed hate takes its place. — H. Havelock Ellis

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

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

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

No faith is our own that we have not arduously won. — Havelock Ellis

Even the most scientific investigator in science, the most thoroughgoing Positivist, cannot dispense with fiction; he must at least make use of categories, and they are already fictions, analogical fictions, or labels, which give us the same pleasure as children receive when they are told the "name" of a thing. — Havelock Ellis

The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated - of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired. — Havelock Ellis

Beauty is the child of love. — Havelock Ellis

The great writer finds style as the mystic finds God, in his own soul. — 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. — Havelock Ellis

To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men. — Havelock Ellis

Dancing and building are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that expressthemselves 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. Music, acting, poetry proceed in the one mighty stream; sculpture, painting, all the arts of design, in the other. There is no primary art outside these two arts, for their origin is far earlier than man himself; and dancing came first. — Havelock Ellis

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

There is nothing more fragile than civilization. — Havelock Ellis

Where there is most labour there is not always most life. — Havelock Ellis

A scholar like myself who is not a Sinologist and yet ventures the proposition that Chinese languages should be rewritten in the Greek alphabet (or "Romanized", to use the current term) is treading on uncharted territory (for him) and does so at his peril. — Eric A. Havelock