William Penn

Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious and Devout Souls, are everywhere of one religion; and when Death has taken off the Mask, they will know one another, though the divers Liveries they wear here make them Strangers.

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

An index is a great leveller.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy.