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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Man lives by imagination.”

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

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

“Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life.”

“The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.”