William Penn

He that has more knowledge than judgment, is made for another man’s use more than his own.

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, — for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, — for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

Passion is the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.

For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

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.

If you want to get what you want give up being right.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.