William Penn

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money’s sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal.That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

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.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.