William Penn

For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Eat therefore to live, and do not live to eat.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

The first wealth is health.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Where charity keeps pace with grain, industry is blessed, but to slave to get, and keep it sordidly, is a sin against Providence, a vice in government and an injury to their neighbours.

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.