Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 60: December 1667
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 60: December 1667
Translated by Mynors Bright
December 1667: London is tense. The Dutch War has ended in humiliation. Parliament is circling the Navy Board, looking for someone to blame. And Samuel Pepys, thirty-four years old and increasingly anxious about his career and his marriage, sits down each night to write with startling honesty about everything he sees, does, and desires. This volume captures him lending money he can't afford to lend, attending hearings that could end his career, and still finding time for theatre, for church, for the small pleasures of a new suit and a pretty face. Pepys is not a saint. He knows it. That's what makes him extraordinary. He records his infidelities, his financial anxieties, his professional jealousy, and his pride with a candor that feels almost modern. Here is Restoration London as lived: not from above, but from the street-level mess of a man trying to get ahead while the world around him trembles.
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“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.””
— 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.””
— Samuel Pepys
“He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound.””
— Samuel Pepys
“And so to bed.””
— Samuel Pepys
“Great talk among people how some of the Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day. Against which, whenever it shall be, good God fit us all!””
— Samuel Pepys
“I find it a hard matter to settle to business after so much leisure and pleasure.””
— Samuel Pepys
“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
“neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out.””
— Samuel Pepys
“I saw the girl of the house, being very pretty, go into a chamber, and I went in after her and kissed her.””
— Samuel Pepys
