Lytton Strachey Quotes

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Lytton Strachey

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

Lytton Strachey

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

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

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

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

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

Lytton Strachey

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

Lytton Strachey