Lytton Strachey Quotes

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

~ Lytton Strachey

For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian──ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.

~ Lytton Strachey

There was hardly an eminent writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of the Conciergerie or the Bastille.

~ Lytton Strachey

It was not by gentle sweetness and self-abnegation that order was brought out of chaos; it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid attention to detail, by ceaseless labor, by the fixed determination of an indomitable will.

~ Lytton Strachey

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

~ Lytton Strachey

If this is dying I don't think much of it.

~ Lytton Strachey

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.

~ Lytton Strachey

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.

~ Lytton Strachey