48 Quotes by Lytton Strachey

A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile

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.

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.

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

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

The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.

There is something dark and wintry about the atmosphere of the later Middle Ages.

In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

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