William Penn

The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

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

It were better to be of no church, than to be bitter for any.

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

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

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.

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

We all have our challenges, issues, things that we’re working through and insecurity is there because nobody is perfect no matter who you are. It’s that imperfection that makes you so dope.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.