Havelock Ellis Quotes

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

Life should be art, right?

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

I think and that is all that I am.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

Life is a state of consciousness.

I dream, therefore I exist.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

I imagine, therefore I belong and am free.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.

If there is no intelligence in the universe, then the universe has created something greater than itself-for it has created you and me.

I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school.

Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

I tell, therefore you are.

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, " This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.