William Penn

To delay justice, is injustice.

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

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

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.

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

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Language is the archives of history.

God’s first creature, which was light.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.