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The Place Where Optimism Most Flourishes Is The Lunatic Asylum.

-Havelock Ellis

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The Place Where Optimism

Havelock Ellis

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The Place Where Optimism Most Flourishes Is The Lunatic Asylum.

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What We Call 'morals' Is Simply Blind Obedience To Words Of Command.

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.

...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.

Courtship, Properly Understood, Is The Process Whereby Both The Male And The Female Are Brought Into That State Of Sexual Tumescence Which Is A More Or Less Necessary Condition For Sexual Intercourse. The Play Of Courtship Cannot, Therefore, Be Considered To Be Definitely Brought To An End By The Ceremony Of Marriage; It May More Properly Be Regarded As The Natural Preliminary To Every Act Of Coitus.

To Make A Mountain Out Of A Mole-hill.

So Far As Business And Money Are Concerned, A Country Gains Nothing By A Successful War, Even Though That War Involves The Acquisition Of Immense New Provinces.

A Man Must Not Swallow More Beliefs Than He Can Digest.

The Place Where Optimism Most Flourishes Is The Lunatic Asylum.

Charm Is A Woman's Strength Just As Strength Is A Man's Charm.

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.

It Is The Little Writer Rather Than The Great Writer Who Seems Never To Quote, And The Reason Is That He Is Never Really Doing Anything Else.

The Greatest Task Before Civilization At Present Is To Make Machines What They Ought To Be, The Slaves, Instead Of The Masters Of Men.

In Philosophy, It Is Not The Attainment Of The Goal That Matters, It Is The Things That Are Met With By The Way

I Regard Sex As The Central Problem Of Life. And Now That The Problem Of Religion Has Practically Been Settled, And That The Problem Of Labor Has At Least Been Placed On A Practical Foundation, The Question Of Sex—with The Racial Questions That Rest On It—stands Before The Coming Generations As The Chief Problem For Solution. Sex Lies At The Root Of Life, And We Can Never Learn To Reverence Life Until We Know How To Understand Sex.

Dreams Are Real As Long As They Last. Can We Say More Of Life?

Here, Where We Reach The Sphere Of Mathematics, We Are Among Processes Which Seem To Some The Most Inhuman Of All Human Activities And The Most Remote From Poetry. Yet It Is Here That The Artist Has The Fullest Scope Of His Imagination.

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.

The Promised Land Always Lies On The Other Side Of A Wilderness.

There Can Be No Sexual Love Without Lust; But, On The Other Hand, Until The Currents Of Lust In The Organism Have Been Irradiatedas To Affect Other Parts Of The Psychic Organism--at The Least The Affections And The Social Feelings--it Is Not Yet Sexual Love. Lust, The Specific Sexual Impulse, Is Indeed The Primary And Essential Element In This Synthesis, For It Alone Is Adequate To The End Of Reproduction, Not Only In Animals But In Men. But It Is Not Until Lust Is Expanded And Irradiated That It Develops Into The Exquisite And Enthralling Flower Of Love.

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.

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.

Even The Most Scientific Investigator In Science, The Most Thoroughgoing Positivist, Cannot Dispense With Fiction; He Must At Least Make Use Of Categories, And They Are Already Fictions, Analogical Fictions, Or Labels, Which Give Us The Same Pleasure As Children Receive When They Are Told The "name" Of A Thing.

When Love Is Suppressed Hate Takes Its Place.

Every Man Of Genius Sees The World At A Different Angle From His Fellows, And There Is His Tragedy.

The Second Great Channel Through Which The Impulse Towards The Control Of Procreation For The Elevation Of The Race Is Entering Into Practical Life Is By The General Adoption, By The Educated—of Methods For The Prevention Of Conception Except When Conception Is Deliberately Desired.

Socialism Also Brings Us Up Against The Hard Rock Of Eugenic Fact Which, If We Neglect It, Will Dash Our Most Beautiful Social Construction To Fragments.

No Act Can Be Quite So Intimate As The Sexual Embrace.

There Is Nothing More Fragile Than Civilization.

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.

Man Lives By Imagination.

The Sexual Regions Constitute A Particularly Vulnerable Spot, And Remain So Even In Man, And The Need For Their Protection Which Thus Exists Conflicts With The Prominent Display Required For Sexual Allurement. This End Is Far More Effectively Attained, With Greater Advantage And Less Disadvantage, By Concentrating The Chief Ensigns Of Sexual Attractiveness On The Upper And More Conspicuous Parts Of The Body. This Method Is Well-nigh Universal Among Animals As Well As In Man.

The More Rapidly A Civilization Progresses, The Sooner It Dies For Another To Rise In Its Place.

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.

Dancing And Building Are The Two Primary And Essential Arts. The Art Of Dancing Stands At The Source Of All The Arts That Expressthemselves 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. Music, Acting, Poetry Proceed In The One Mighty Stream; Sculpture, Painting, All The Arts Of Design, In The Other. There Is No Primary Art Outside These Two Arts, For Their Origin Is Far Earlier Than Man Himself; And Dancing Came First.

Reproduction Is So Primitive And Fundamental A Function Of Vital Organisms That The Mechanism By Which It Is Assured Is Highly Complex And Not Yet Clearly Understood. It Is Not Necessarily Connected With Sex, Nor Is Sex Necessarily Connected With Reproduction.

The Largely Objective Character Of Beauty Is Further Indicated By The Fact That To A Considerable Extent Beauty Is The Expression Of Health. A Well And Harmoniously Developed Body, Tense Muscles, An Elastic And Finely Toned Skin, Bright Eyes, Grace And Animation Of Carriage- All These Things Which Are Essential To Beauty Are The Conditions Of Health.

We Cannot Remain Consistent With The World Save By Growing Inconsistent With Our Past Selves.

Dancing As An Art, We May Be Sure, Cannot Die Out, But Will Always Be Undergoing A Rebirth. Not Merely As An Art, But Also As A Social Custom, It Perpetually Emerges Afresh From The Soul Of The People.

Pain And Death Are Part Of Life. To Reject Them Is To Reject Life Itself.

It Is Here [in Mathematics] That The Artist Has The Fullest Scope Of His Imagination.

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.

The Mother Is Really A More Immediate Parent Than The Father Because One Is Born From The Mother, And The First Experience Of Any Infant Is The Mother.

Greek Is The Embodiment Of The Fluent Speech That Runs Or Soars, The Speech Of A People Which Could Not Help Giving Winged Feet Toits God Of Art. Latin Is The Embodiment Of The Weighty And Concentrated Speech Which Is Hammered And Pressed And Polished Into The Shape Of Its Perfection, As The Ethically Minded Romans Believed That The Soul Also Should Be Wrought.

Mankind Is Becoming A Single Unit, And That For A Unit To Fight Against Itself Is Suicide.

The Omnipresent Process Of Sex, As It Is Woven Into The Whole Texture Of Our Man's Or Woman's Body, Is The Pattern Of All The Process Of Our Life.

In The Early Days Of Christianity The Exercise Of Chastity Was Frequently Combined With A Close And Romantic Intimacy Of Affection Between The Sexes Which Shocked Austere Moralists.

We Cannot Be Sure That We Ought Not To Regard The Most Criminal Country As That Which In Some Aspects Possesses The Highest Civilization.

The By-product Is Sometimes More Valuable Than The Product.

Where There Is Most Labour There Is Not Always Most Life.

The Prevalence Of Suicide, Without Doubt, Is A Test Of Height In Civilization; It Means That The Population Is Winding Up Its Nervous And Intellectual System To The Utmost Point Of Tension And That Sometimes It Snaps.

Those Persons Who Are Burning To Display Heroism May Rest Assured That The Course Of Social Evolution Will Offer Them Every Opportunity.

A Sublime Faith In Human Imbecility Has Seldom Led Those Who Cherish It Astray.

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.

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.

There Has Never Been Any Country At Every Moment So Virtuous And So Wise That It Has Not Sometimes Needed To Be Saved From Itself.

There Is A Very Intimate Connection Between Hypnotic Phenomena And Religion.

The Sun, The Moon And The Stars Would Have Disappeared Long Ago... Had They Happened To Be Within The Reach Of Predatory Human Hands.

All Civilization Has From Time To Time Become A Thin Crust Over A Volcano Of Revolution.

The World's Greatest Thinkers Have Often Been Amateurs; For High Thinking Is The Outcome Of Fine And Independent Living, And For That A Professional Chair Offers No Special Opportunities.

All The Art Of Living Lies In A Fine Mingling Of Letting Go And Holding On.

The Mother Is The Child's Supreme Parent.

Birth-control Is Effecting, And Promising To Effect, Many Functions In Our Social Life.

The Conflict Of Forces And The Struggle Of Opposing Wills Are Of The Essence Of Our Universe And Alone Hold It Together.

No Faith Is Our Own That We Have Not Arduously Won.

Civilized Men Arrived In The Pacific, Armed With Alcohol, Syphilis, Trousers, And The Bible.

The Absence Of Flaw In Beauty Is Itself A Flaw.

Thinking In Its Lower Grades, Is Comparable To Paper Money, And In Its Higher Forms It Is A Kind Of Poetry.

To Live Remains An Art Which Everyone Must Learn, And Which No One Can Teach.

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.

Sexual Pleasure, Wisely Used And Not Abused, May Prove The Stimulus And Liberator Of Our Finest And Most Exalted Activities.

Every Ist Writes His Own Autobiography.

There Is Nothing That War Has Ever Achieved That We Could Not Better Achieve Without It.

The Romantic Embrace Can Only Be Compared With Music And With Prayer.

One Can Know Nothing Of Giving Aught That Is Worthy To Give Unless One Also Knows How To Take.

On The Threshold Of The Moral World We Meet The Idea Of Freedom, 'one Of The Weightiest Concepts Man Has Ever Formed,' Once A Dogma, In The Course Of Time A Hypothesis, Now In The Eyes Of Many A Fiction, Yet We Cannot Do Without It, Even Although We May Be Firmly Convinced That Our Acts Are Determined By Laws That Cannot Be Broken.

However Well Organised The Foundations Of Life May Be, Life Must Always Be Full Of Risks.

The Mathematician Has Reached The Highest Rung On The Ladder Of Human Thought.

The Relation Of The Individual Person To The Species He Belongs To Is The Most Intimate Of All Relations.

Every Artist Writes His Own Autobiography.

The Aesthetic Pleasure Of Dance Is A Secondary Reflection Of The Primary, Vital Joy Of Courtship.

Jealousy, That Dragon Which Slays Love Under The Pretence Of Keeping It Alive.

Imagination Is A Poor Substitute For Experience.

A Religion Can No More Afford To Degrade Its Devil Than To Degrade Its God.

Beauty Is The Child Of Love.

The Modesty Of Women, Which, In Its Most Primitive Form Among Animals, Is Based On Sexual Periodicity, Is, With That Periodicity, An Essential Condition Of Courtship.

All Arguments Are Meaningless Until We Gain Personal Experience. One Must Win One's Own Place In The Spiritual World Painfully And Alone. There Is No Other Way Of Salvation. The Promised Land Always Lies On The Other Side Of A Wilderness.

Heroes Exterminate Each Other For The Benefit Of People Who Are Not Heroes.

Einstein Is Notmerely An Artist In His Moments Of Leisure And Play, As A Great Statesman May Play Golf Or A Great Soldier Grow Orchids. He Retains The Same Attitude In The Whole Of His Work. He Traces Science To Its Roots In Emotion, Which Is Exactly Where Art Is Also Rooted.

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.

Men Who Know Themselves Are No Longer Fools. They Stand On The Threshold Of The Door Of Wisdom.

Of Woman As A Real Human Being, With Sexual Needs And Sexual Responsibilities, Morality Has Often Known Nothing.

Liberty Is Always Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business

It Is On Our Failures That We Base A New And Different And Better Success.

Had There Been A Lunatic Asylum In The Suburbs Of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ Would Infallibly Have Been Shut Up In It At The Outset Of His Public Career. That Interview With Satan On A Pinnacle Of The Temple Would Alone Have Damned Him, And Everything That Happened After Could Have Confirmed The Diagnosis. The Whole Religious Complexion Of The Modern World Is Due To The Absence From Jerusalem Of A Lunatic Asylum.

Sex Lies At The Root Of Life, And We Can Never Learn To Reverence Life Until We Know How To Understand Sex.

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.

The Great Writer Finds Style As The Mystic Finds God, In His Own Soul.

The Immense Value Of Becoming Acquainted With A Foreign Language Is That We Are Thereby Led Into A New World Of Tradition And Thought And Feeling.

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.

Still, Whether We Like It Or Not, The Task Of Speeding Up The Decrease Of The Human Population Becomes Increasingly Urgent.

The Parents Have Not Only To Train Their Children: It Is Of At Least Equal Importance That They Should Train Themselves.

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.

Life Is Livable Because We Know That Wherever We Go Most Of The People We Meet Will Be Restrained In Their Actions Towards Us By An Almost Instinctive Network Of Taboos.

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.

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.

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.

What We Call Progress Is The Exchange Of One Nuisance For Another Nuisance.

Progress And Change

Philosophy Is A Purely Personal Matter. A Genuine Philosopher's Credo Is The Outcome Of A Single Complex Personality; It Cannot Be Transferred. No Two Persons, If Sincere, Can Have The Same Philosophy.

All Progress In Literary Style Lies In The Heroic Resolve To Cast Aside Accretions And Exuberances, All The Conventions Of A Past Age That Were Once Beautiful Because Alive And Are Now False Because Dead.

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