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"Discretion is not the better part of biography."
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"Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?"
"I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion."
"Perfect objectivity is always impossible, no matter who writes a person's biography."
"I had to do the book because there was an unauthorised biography which didn't tell it like it was."
"When I got off him, I spat the blood that was swamping my mouth in to his face, I looked down at him and it really looked like he was dying- shit! The ambulance arrived in about a minute and they got an oxygen mask straight on him and I could see the life draining out of him. You see, this is the problem; we are only human and flesh and blood."
"We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?"
"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing."
Explore more quotes by Lytton Strachey
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art."
"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."
"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."
"Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work."
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