William Penn

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

Where God does not govern, tyrants will rule.

Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Revolutions are always verbose.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

I wish for you the wisdom to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology.