William Penn

He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

They that Marry for Money cannot have the true Satisfaction of Marriage; the requisite Means being wanting.

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

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.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

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

It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.