Explore Quotes by William Penn

It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as to make up the state of our treats.

I shall pass through life but once. Let me show kindness now, as I shall not pass this way again.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

Choose a friend as thou dost a wife, till death separate you.

It is the difference betwixt lust and love that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, lust wastes by enjoyment.

The Country is both the Philosopher's Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune.

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

Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.

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.

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.

Force may subdue, but love gains, and he that forgives first wins the laurel.

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

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.

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

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

It would be far better to be of no church than to be bitter of any.