William Penn

True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

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.

To be like Christ is to be a Christian.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

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

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.