William Penn

Drunkenness spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans man. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad.

O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.

A Man in Business must put up many Affronts, if he loves his own Quiet.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

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.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

If in doubt, don’t. If still in doubt, do what’s right.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

The sun is but a morning star.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

Whether he knew it or not, the life he lived was his penance. Punishing himself, for what he believes are his sins. Consciously or subconsciously, he creates the world he lives in. Never believing that he is deserving happiness, deserving joy. His self-destructive nature, in his eyes, and his eyes only, is justified. Everyone is deserving absolution, but he needs to understand, that he is the only one able to forgive himself.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.