Samuel Pepys Quotes

Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.

Find myself £43 worse than I was the last month ... chiefly arisen from my layings-out in clothes for myself and wife; viz., for her, about £12, and for myself, £55 or thereabouts.

I find my wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up; but I will not, for my content-sake, give it.

It having been a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins

I do still see that my nature is not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all things, though yet in the middle of it, it has reluctances after my business, which is neglected by my following my pleasure. However musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.

However, music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.

I know not how to abstain from reading.

As happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!

The best of a bad bargain.

Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

Now public business takes up so much of my time that I must get time a Sundays or a nights to look after my own matters.

I did this night promise my wife never to go to bed without calling upon God, upon my knees, in prayer.

But Lord! To see the absurd nature of Englishmen that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at everything that looks strange.

He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound.

At the Royall Oake Taverne, I drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.

Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

Fight the good fight; and always call to mind that it is not you who are mortal, but this body of ours. For your true being is not discerned by perceiving your physical appearance. But 'what a man's mind is, that is what he is' not that individual human shape that we identify through our senses.

I went out to Charing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition.

Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr. Hooke's Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.

But me thought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.