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

Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

As happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!

Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

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 in that condition.

Unlike God the artist does not start with nothing and make something of it. He starts with himself as nothing and makes something of the nothing with the things at hand.

Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr. Hooke's Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.

I know not how to abstain from reading.

I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.

The best of a bad bargain.

Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

The external evils are nothing compared to the evils that we harbor in our souls.

Love is about filling up the space, not making more holes.

Our sense of self is a kind of construct. It is in some ways like a novel, and it's like a fabric of fictions that we patch together from memory.

We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why.

Yes, go on. Leave. You're always coming and going. The rest of us are stuck here. Do you think he'd still love you if he knew who you are? He doesn't really care—only when it suits him.

We humans have come to a crossroads in our history: we can either destroy the world or create a good future.

My life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen.