Quotes by Havelock Ellis

About Havelock Ellis:

Henry Havelock Ellis is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. He served as president of the Galton Institute and, like many intellectuals of his era, supported eugenics.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Havelock Ellis

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

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

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 relationshi...

Havelock Ellis

The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.

Havelock Ellis

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

Havelock Ellis

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

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

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

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

Havelock Ellis

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?

Havelock Ellis

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

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

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

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

Havelock Ellis

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.

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

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

Havelock Ellis

Author Bio

  • NameHavelock Ellis
  • DescriptionBritish physician, writer, and social reformer
  • AliasesHenry Havelock Ellis; H. Havelock Ellis
  • BornFebruary 2, 1859
  • DiedJuly 8, 1939
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPhysician; Psychologist; Writer