Lytton Strachey Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Lytton Strachey Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Lytton Strachey Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

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.

Lytton Strachey

But Racine’s extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist.

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

When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved.

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, almost equally, to the future and to the past.

Lytton Strachey

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

Lytton Strachey

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

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

The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion.

Lytton Strachey

In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.

Lytton Strachey

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying – half unconsciously, perhaps – to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.

Lytton Strachey

In the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of Italy, and Shakespeare in that of England. His glory is more than national – it is universal.

Lytton Strachey

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

Lytton Strachey

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

Lytton Strachey