William Penn

In all debates let truth be thy aim; not victory or an unjust interest; and endeavor to gain rather than to expose thy antagonist.

Did we believe a final Reckoning and Judgment; or did we think enough of what we do believe, we would allow more Love in Religion than we do; since Religion it self is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better. It is most reasonable Men should value that Benefit, which is most durable. Now Tongues shall cease, and Prophecy fail, and Faith shall be consummated in Sight, and Hope in Enjoyment; but Love remains.

He that lives to forever, never fears dying.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

All diseases run into one, old age.

The first wealth is health.

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.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.