"Pour l'avenir, je vous prie, ne me traitez pas avec tant de cérémonie, en me donnant tant de 'majestés,' car je ne veux pas qu'il y ait autre chose entre nous deux, qu'amitié."
"I will not now write to you in French, for my head is dosed with business!"
"Pray send me some images, to put in prayer-books: they are for my wife, who can gett none heere. I assure you it will be a great present to her, and she will looke upon them often; for she is not onlie content to say the greate office in the breviere every day, but likewise that of Our Lady too; and this is besides goeing to chapell, where she makes use of none of these. I am iust now goeing to see a new play; so I shall say no more but that I am intierly yours." (These are "the pretty pious pictures" which Pepys saw and admired.)
"They who will not beleeve anything to be reasonably designed unless it be successfully executed, have neede of a less difficult game to play than mine; and I hope friends will thinke I am now too old, and have had too much experience of things and persons to be grossly imposed upon; and therefore they who would seem to pity me so for being so often deceeved, do upon the matter declare what opinion they have of my understanding and judgment. And I pray you, discountenance those kind of people."
"I hope it is but in a compliment to me, when you say my niece" (the little Marie-Louise d'Orléans, afterwards Queen of Spain) "is so like me: for I never thought my face was even so much as intended for a beauty! I wish with all my heart I could see her; for at this distance I love her."
"Sir George Downing is come out of Holland, and I shall now be very busy upon that matter. The States keepe a great braying and noise, but I beleeve, when it comes to it, they will looke twise before they leape. I never saw so great an appetite to a warre as is in both this towne and country, espetially in the parlament-men, who, I am confident, would pawne there estates to maintaine a warre. But all this shall not governe me, for I will look meerly to what is just, and best for the honour and goode of England, and will be very steady in what I resolve: and if I be forsed to a warre, I shall be ready with as good ships and men as ever was seen, and leave the successe to God." (Here we have a sort of original for the modern chant: