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 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the high rates of suicide reflect the limits of human endurance in a complex society.
Havelock Ellis points to the phenomenon of suicide as an indicator of the strains and pressures faced by individuals in a highly developed civilization. He implies that as societies become more complex and demanding, people's mental and emotional capacities can be pushed to their extremes, sometimes resulting in tragic outcomes. This serves as a reflection on the psychological toll that modern life can exert on individuals, emphasizing the importance of addressing mental health within the context of societal progress.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness campaign to illustrate the impact of societal expectations.
More from Havelock Ellis
All quotes →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.
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach.
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.
Similar quotes
A city with one newspaper, or with a morning and an evening paper under one ownership, is like a man with one eye, and often the eye is glass.
Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.
So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?
We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.
You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.