William Penn

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good.

Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

It’s a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.