Wit & Attitude Quote by Samuel Pepys

Pepys catches the institution of marriage in a moment of almost comic cruelty: the already-married gawking at the not-yet-married like veterans watching fresh recruits board the boat. The line works because it turns “delight” into a guilty pleasure, a sharp little confession that the social ritual isn’t just about love or piety, but about recruitment into a shared burden. Calling the couple “poor fools” isn’t simply cynicism; it’s camaraderie shaded with regret, the knowing laugh of someone who has learned what the ceremony politely refuses to name.

The verb “decoyed” does the real damage. Marriage isn’t chosen so much as lured, staged-managed by church, family, custom, and the flattering myth of new beginnings. Pepys implies a bait-and-switch: public splendor now, private constraint later. That’s why “our condition” lands with the weight of a diagnosis. Marriage becomes a state one enters, like an illness or a class, not a romantic climax.

Context matters: Pepys is a Restoration-era diarist whose great talent is stripping the varnish off respectable life. In 17th-century England, marriage was economic security, inheritance policy, religious duty, sexual regulation - a social machine with personal consequences. Pepys, often candid about desire and domestic friction, recognizes the church wedding as theater: a ceremony of optimism watched by people who know the backstage costs. The subtext is less “don’t get married” than “watch how society sells permanence”: with music, vows, and an audience already invested in believing the trap is holy.