William Penn

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

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

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

They must first judge themselves, that presume to censure others: And such will not be apt to overshoot the Mark. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. And yet we could hurt no Man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the [Laurel]. If I am even with my Enemy, the Debt is paid; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

Remember who you are.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Creativity is a consequence of action, not its motivation. Do what needs to be done and then ask whether it was possible.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we’re so fond of it.

He who is upright in his way of life and free from sin.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.