Havelock Ellis

Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to read more

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

"Charm" - which means the power to effect work without employing brute force - is indispensable to women. Charm is read more

"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.

Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...It is read more

Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...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.

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

...aesthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual emotion; from the lover's point of view many things are beautiful read more

...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.