Lytton Strachey

“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....”

“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.”

“Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.”

“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.”

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