William Penn

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.

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

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

Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves: and perhaps that is the reason of it.

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.

Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

That which builds is better than that which is built.