Lytton Strachey Quotes

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.

Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God.

Englishmen have always loved Moliere.

In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity?
In good works?
Possibly.
In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps.
But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality

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

The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its colour is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely effective, though some ill-bred persons have been observed to laugh. It is a red-brown of the most approved tint, and makes me look like a French decadent poet - or something equally distinguished.

Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

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

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

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.

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

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.

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.

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower.

One has a few moments that are tolerable
one breathes,as it were,again;one remembers things,but one hardly hopes.I hope for the New Age-that is all-which will cure all our woes,and give us new ones,and make us happy enough for death ...

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

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.

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

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.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

As usual, it struck me that letters were the only really satisfactory form of literature. They give one the facts so amazingly, don't they? I felt when I got to the end that I'd lived for years in that set. But oh dearie me I am glad that I'm not in it!

How on earth does she make the English language float and float?

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to its destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgement are better left unmade.