Ellen Key

The art of natural education consists in ignoring the faults of children nine times out of ten, in avoiding immediate interference, which…

— Ellen Key

The present practice is to impress one's own discoveries, opinions and principles on the child by constantly directing his actions. The last…

— Ellen Key

All philanthropy ... is only a savory fumigation burning at the mouth of a sewer. This incense offering makes the air more…

— Ellen Key

Great love, like great genius, can never be a duty: both are life's gracious gifts to its elect.

— Ellen Key

War can be prevented only by broad-minded statesmanship - a statesmanship that understands how to enlist people's interests in a leading cause.

— Ellen Key

When it comes to the application to life of existing laws and morals, woman, because of her willing receptiveness, her elasticity and…

— Ellen Key

The married woman as family provider beside the man, often also in place of the man, but always however subservient to the…

— Ellen Key

Socialism and the woman movement are two mighty streams which drag along with them great parts of the firm formations which they…

— Ellen Key

Formerly, a nation that broke the peace, did not trouble to try and prove to the world that it was done solely…

— Ellen Key

When, in any ethical department, unity is attained between outer demands and inner desires, between nature and conscience, between the needs of…

— Ellen Key

One day we were brought into the world, knowing love only as being what we had for our toys, family, and friends.…

— Ellen Key

The genius of happiness is still so rare. To possess it means to approach life with the humility of a beggar, but…

— Ellen Key

The home was a closed sphere touched only at its edge by the world's evolution.

— Ellen Key

Children must be impressed with the fact that the greatest heroes are those who fight to help others, not those who fight…

— Ellen Key

Social motherliness has made women's struggle for liberty the loveliest synthesis of egoism and altruism.

— Ellen Key

Christianity is sustained by the knowledge that the object of man's life on earth is his development as an eternal being. Therefore,…

— Ellen Key

When the sense of solidarity has been developed to such a point that each one feels the cause of all others as…

— Ellen Key

Conventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearances before reality, form before content.

— Ellen Key

Morality in its noblest forms remains inexplicable unless one takes into account that power of growth in the human soul which has…

— Ellen Key

Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom…

— Ellen Key

When psychical phenomena have been as much investigated as physical, love will also receive its cumatology - that is, its science of…

— Ellen Key

In order to overcome the spirit that creates war, mothers must begin in the tender years of childhood to teach children that…

— Ellen Key

Happiness lies so far from man, but he must begin by daring to will it.

— Ellen Key

Whereas nationalism still seeks power, honour, and glory through means that endanger other countries, patriotism knows that a country's strength and honour…

— Ellen Key

Love has been in perpetual strife with monogamy.

— Ellen Key