quotes from Pepys
Created | Updated Dec 22, 2012
from Claire Tomalin's 'Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self' - Penguin Books 2002
On Music
"...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. Witness the universal gusto we see it followed with, wherever to be found."
On God
'(Pepys) did not name God but attributed power and mystery to "something above" and "incomprehensible", "to which alone be Glory"'
'Once, when asked to provide a reference, he wrote, "What his Religion or Creed is I neither know concerning him, nor ever thought worth enquiring after any other man's; provided his conversation be sober and honest".'
At Death
'His nephew John Jackson wrote: "I came and found him ratling in the throat and breathing very hard." He had taken no nourishment for two days and died, according to his own reliable watch, at 3:47 (am).'
'Later on the day of his death, John Shadwell, Hans Sloane and the surgeon Charles Bernard performed an autopsy on the body of their friend. Shadwell and Sloane were fellow members of the Royal Society, and they were following Jackson's wishes, "for our own satisfaction as well as public good', he explained to Evelyn. Pepys himself would undoubtedly have approved, both because he valued scientific research and because he believed his case to be of interest. What they found makes his stoicism over the last years the more impressive. The left kidney contained seven irregular stones joined in a mass adhering to his back, the surrounding areas including the gut much inflamed, septic and mortified, the bladder gangrenous and the old wound from the stone operation (40 years earlier) broken open again. The lungs were full of black spots and foam, the guts discoloured, flaccid, empty and inflamed; but the heart and right kidney were sound.'
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On Music
"...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. Witness the universal gusto we see it followed with, wherever to be found."
On God
'(Pepys) did not name God but attributed power and mystery to "something above" and "incomprehensible", "to which alone be Glory"'
'Once, when asked to provide a reference, he wrote, "What his Religion or Creed is I neither know concerning him, nor ever thought worth enquiring after any other man's; provided his conversation be sober and honest".'
At Death
'His nephew John Jackson wrote: "I came and found him ratling in the throat and breathing very hard." He had taken no nourishment for two days and died, according to his own reliable watch, at 3:47 (am).'
'Later on the day of his death, John Shadwell, Hans Sloane and the surgeon Charles Bernard performed an autopsy on the body of their friend. Shadwell and Sloane were fellow members of the Royal Society, and they were following Jackson's wishes, "for our own satisfaction as well as public good', he explained to Evelyn. Pepys himself would undoubtedly have approved, both because he valued scientific research and because he believed his case to be of interest. What they found makes his stoicism over the last years the more impressive. The left kidney contained seven irregular stones joined in a mass adhering to his back, the surrounding areas including the gut much inflamed, septic and mortified, the bladder gangrenous and the old wound from the stone operation (40 years earlier) broken open again. The lungs were full of black spots and foam, the guts discoloured, flaccid, empty and inflamed; but the heart and right kidney were sound.'
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