“Sauntering was the true Sultana Queen of his Majesty's affections.”

Idleness treated as the ruling passion of a Restoration court · Character of Charles II, as commonly cited from Sheffield

• Character
• Pastime
• Power

“If he had been as solicitous about improving the faculties of his mind, as he was in the management of his bodily health, that had not failed to have made it famous.”

Talent wasted on ease when it might have made a reign memorable · Essay, A Character of Charles II

• Character
• Mind
• Waste

“I yet dare confidently affirm it to be only that which is vulgarly though unjustly counted none at all, I mean Deism.”

Judging a king's religion as liveliness of mind rather than settled creed · Essay, A Character of Charles II

• Belief
• Character
• Religion

“I took the liberty to represent to him what a ridiculous story it would make, should we return without fighting.”

Honour as public reputation rather than private fury · Memoir of his quarrel with the Earl of Rochester

• Courage
• Honour
• Reputation

“Often for the king, always for the public good.”

A brief claim that public duty outranked personal loyalty to the crown · Self-composed epitaph motto, Westminster Abbey

• Duty
• Loyalty
• Politics

“I lived doubtful, not dissolute; I die unresolved, not unresigned. Ignorance and error are incident to human nature. I trust in an Almighty and All-good God.”

A courtier's last accounting of faith, doubt, and the limits of human knowledge · Self-composed epitaph, directed in his will

• Doubt
• Faith
• Mortality