Lytton Strachey

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

— Lytton Strachey

Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to…

— Lytton Strachey

When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at…

— Lytton Strachey

Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.

— Lytton Strachey

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole…

— Lytton Strachey

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

— Lytton Strachey

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background,…

— Lytton Strachey

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value…

— Lytton Strachey

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.

— Lytton Strachey

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

— Lytton Strachey

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

— Lytton Strachey

Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged,…

— Lytton Strachey

Englishmen have always loved Moliere.

— Lytton Strachey

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to…

— Lytton Strachey

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

— 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…

— Lytton Strachey

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

— Lytton Strachey

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of…

— Lytton Strachey

In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply…

— Lytton Strachey

There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.

— Lytton Strachey

“The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its colour is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely…

— Lytton Strachey

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole…

— Lytton Strachey

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

— Lytton Strachey

In the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of…

— Lytton Strachey

It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

— Lytton Strachey