William Penn

Avoid popularity it has many snares and no real benefit.

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.

They that Marry for Money cannot have the true Satisfaction of Marriage; the requisite Means being wanting.

Amuse not thy self therefore with the numerous Opinions of the World, nor value thy self upon verbal Orthodoxy, Philosophy, or thy Skill in Tongues, or Knowledge of the Fathers; (too much the Business and Vanity of the World). But in this rejoyce, That thou knowest God, that is the Lord, who exerciseth loving Kindness, and Judgment; and Righteousness in the Earth.

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

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

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

Character is just another word for having a perfectly disciplined and educated will.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.