William Penn

Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.

It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.

Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth.

When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

We hate the kindness which we understand.

All successful men have agreed in one thing – they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

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.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…