Havelock Ellis Quotes

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

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

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

'Homosexual' is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it.

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.

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.

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

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

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.

The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.

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

The byproduct is sometimes more valuable than the product.

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.

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.

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.