# Quote — Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians

> The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England. … With us, the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing has been relegated to the journeymen of letters; we do not reflect that it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

- Author: [Lytton Strachey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lytton-strachey.md)
- Book: [Eminent Victorians](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lytton-strachey/eminent-victorians.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lytton_Strachey#Eminent_Victorians_(1918)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/lytton-strachey/eminent-victorians/the-art-of-biography

## More from this book

> It is not [the biographer's] business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case, as he understands them...dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior motives.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lytton-strachey/eminent-victorians/it-is-not.md)

> The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lytton-strachey/eminent-victorians/the-history-of-the.md)