Samuel Pepys Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

Samuel Pepys
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

Samuel Pepys
But Lord! how everybody's looks, and discourse in the street, is of death, and nothing else; and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.

Samuel Pepys
The people die so, that now it seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be inside by nine at night that the sick may leave their domestic prison for air and exercise.

Samuel Pepys
I am unwilling to mix my fortune with him that is going down the wind.

Samuel Pepys
While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle…I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!

Samuel Pepys
Most of their discourse was about hunting, in a dialect I understand very little.

Samuel Pepys
Gives me some kind of content to remember how painful it is sometimes to keep money, as well as to get it.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
To the Trinity House, where a very good dinner among the old soakers.

Samuel Pepys
Home, and, being washing-day, dined upon cold meat.

Samuel Pepys
One, by his own confession to me, that can put on two several faces, and look his enemies in the face with as much love as his friends. But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation.

Samuel Pepys
But it is pretty to see what money will do.

Samuel Pepys
Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
This day I am, by the blessing of God, 34 years old, in very good health and mind's content, and in condition of estate much beyond whatever my friends could expect of a child of theirs, this day 34 years. The Lord's name be praised! and may I be ever thankful for it.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
Memoirs are true and useful stars, whilst studied histories are those stars joined in constellations, according to the fancy of the poet.

Samuel Pepys
I see it is impossible for the King to have things done as cheap as other men.

Samuel Pepys
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.

Samuel Pepys
And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave—for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!

Samuel Pepys
My Lord told me that among his father's many old sayings that he had writ in a book of his, this is one: that he that doth get a wench with child and marries her afterward it is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it upon his head.

Samuel Pepys