Samuel Pepys Quotes

Samuel Pepys was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Pepys had no maritime experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London.

Wikipedia

✵ 23. February 1633 – 26. May 1703

Samuel Pepys photo

Samuel Pepys: 16 quotes1 like

Famous Samuel Pepys Quotes

“Music [is] a science peculiarly productive of a pleasure that no state of life, publick or private, secular or sacred; no difference of age or season; no temper of mind or condition of health exempt from present anguish; nor, lastly, distinction of quality, renders either improper, untimely, or unentertaining.”

Letter to the Master of University College, Oxford; published in J. R. Tanner (ed.) Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, 1679-1703 (1926) p. 109. (1700)

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

9 November 1665 http://books.google.com/books?id=azIEAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Strange+to+see+how+a+good+dinner+and+feasting+reconciles+everybody%22&pg=PA120#v=onepage <br class="br">Diary <br class="br">Source: The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection

“But Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at every thing that looks strange.”

November 27, 1662
Diary

“This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and "Lord have mercy upon us" writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension.”

June 7, 1665
Written during the Great Plague.
Diary

“Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office doing business, and also reading a little of L'escholle des filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world.”

February 9, 1668
Diary

“To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.”

December 25, 1665
Diary

Samuel Pepys Quotes

“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 with any pleasure.”

March 10, 1666
Diary

“Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”

March 9, 1666
Diary

“Methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.”

July 19, 1662
Diary

“Did satisfy myself mighty fair in the truth of the saying that the world do not grow old at all, but is in as good condition in all respects as ever it was.”

February 3, 1667
Diary

“Then to the King's Theatre, where we saw Midsummer's Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”

September 29, 1662
Diary

“We to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it.”

September 2, 1666
Of the Great Fire of London.
Diary

“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 do in that condition.”

October 13, 1660
Diary

“A good honest and painfull sermon.”

March 17, 1661
"Painful" here means "painstakingly written".
Diary

“And so to Mrs. Martin and there did what je voudrais avec her, both devante and backward, which is also muy bon plazer.”

June 3, 1666
Diary

“Pretty witty Nell.”

April 3, 1665
Diary

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