William Penn

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

They have a right to censure that have a heart to help: the rest is cruelty, not justice.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

For every why he had a wherefore.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

Any experience of reality is indescribable!

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

Genius Borrows nobly.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

First and foremost, it’s going to be treat others with respect. Be polite: Manners go a long way. Try to come from a good place. And aside from that, stay focused and do the right thing.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.