102 Quotes by Ellen Key

It is not a dream that someday, nations will be able to settle their difficulties without war, just as individuals now settle their personal feuds without resorting to arguments of physical strength or sharp steel. For, then, humanity will have created international jurisdiction and a power to enforce its laws.

It is not sufficient for the young to devote their enthusiasm, their courage, their ambition, their self-sacrifice to the great ideas of the time; the young must not only preserve but increase their powers if they are to be really equal to their eternal task: that of drawing the age in advance.

Just as little as terror - not even the terror of war - can save the world, just as little can hate ever be anything uplifting. Love is the only firm ground for peace - not only love for one's fellowmen, but first of all, love of one's country.

Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc.

Love, as life, will fortunately remain an eternal mystery which no science will be able to penetrate and which reason cannot rule. Our only hope for the future is that man, endowed with a more delicate sense, will listen to the secrets of his own life.

Men have desired, and justly, that women should learn from their confessions in regard to the conflict between man and woman. But woman, because of the conventional conception of womanly purity, has been intimidated from conceding to men a deep insight into her erotic life experiences.

Morality in its noblest forms remains inexplicable unless one takes into account that power of growth in the human soul which has led generation after generation from lower religious and ethical standards to higher ones which often clash with worldly advantages.

On the question of marriage, as in all other respects, Lutheranism is a compromise, a bridge between two logical views of the universe: the Catholic-Christian and the Individualistic Monist. And bridges are made to go over, not to stand upon.

On the whole, the experience that the activity of the soul obeys the law of least resistance has been verified even in regard to women's social morals. As a rule, these have been focused on the family and on charity - among other reasons, because woman's sense of duty seldom finds means of expression in other directions.