William Penn

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

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.

Nothing does Reason more Right, than the Coolness of those that offer it: for Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.

For we put the power in the people.

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment is the treasurer of the one who is wise.

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

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

You are a constant. Forever in my mind; forever in my heart. It seems that most matter how much I try I can’t get rid of you. You are a thorn, stuck in deep; painful to remove, and even when I do, still I’ll bleed and feel the soreness. It will take time, but it will heal. No matter the pain, I will still dare to pick roses.