Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 66: June/july 1668
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 66: June/july 1668
Translated by Mynors Bright
June and July 1668 find Samuel Pepys at the height of his powers, as both Secretary to the Admiralty and the most compulsively readable diarist in the English language. London pulses through his entries: the summer heat, the stink of the Thames, the exhausting negotiations over naval finances that keep him awake at night. He catches plays with an appetite that borders on obsession, pursues women he knows he shouldn't, and records every indiscretion with a self-aware wit that feels startlingly modern. Pepys is a man perpetually apologizing for his weaknesses while making no real effort to mend them, and somehow, that contradiction makes him irresistibly human. This volume offers Restoration England in full sensory detail: the texture of daily existence, the gossip of the court, the anxieties of a navy stretched thin by war, the domestic tensions with his wife Elizabeth, and the particular pleasure of a man who knows his own follies and cannot stop committing them anyway. It is history from the inside, unfiltered, often shameful, always fascinating.
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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
