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Henry Havelock Ellis Quotes

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"Every artist writes his own autobiography."
Art

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

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

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

""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."

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

"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."

"The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum."

"What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command."

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

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

"Man lives by imagination."

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

"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."

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

"We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization."

"All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution."

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

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

"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."

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