William Penn

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.

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

Sexes make no Difference; since in Souls there is none: And they are the Subjects of Friendship.

You are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great; you shall be governed by laws of your own making and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious life. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution and has given me his grace to keep it.

It is a profitable Wisdom to know when we have done enough: Much time and Pains are spared, in not flattering our selves against Probabilities.

Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions.What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

The city is recruited from the country.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

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