11 Quotes & Sayings By Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey was born in London, the only child of a prosperous family. His father was a well-known lawyer and his mother a leading actress of the day. The family lived in London at the time of Strachey's birth, but later moved to Worthing, a resort town on the Sussex coast near Brighton. The family returned to London in 1881 when Strachey was still an infant Read more

He went to Eton College from 1881 until 1885, when he entered Oxford University where he attended Magdalen College and obtained a degree in classics. In 1891 he published his first novel, Eminent Victorians, which was followed two years later by a second novel, The Middle Age of Plots. Still interested in novels while attending Oxford, Strachey started his first play there in 1895 and soon after began work on a third play that was never completed.

In 1896 he married Evelyn Sharp, a fellow novelist and Oxford friend who became a lifelong friend and collaborator, contributing to six of Strachey's subsequent novels.

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.
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It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet. Lytton Strachey
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A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile Lytton Strachey
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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
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There was hardly an eminent writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of the Conciergerie or the Bastille. Lytton Strachey
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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
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Discretion is not the better part of biography. Lytton Strachey
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If this is dying I don't think much of it. Lytton Strachey
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Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived. Lytton Strachey
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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
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The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. Lytton Strachey