William Penn Quotes - Page 5

Love labor: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind.

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

The humble, meek, merciful, and just are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers.

We are too careless of posterity; not considering that as they are, so the next generation will be.

If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.

Inquire often, but judge rarely, and thou wilt not often be mistaken.

Experience is a safe guide.

They have a right to censure that have a heart to help.

Neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss and hardships. Those that would reap and not labour, must faint with the wind, and perish in disappointments; but an hair of my head shall not fall, without the providence of my Father that is over all.

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

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

Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better.

Naked Truth needs no shift.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

Be sure that religion cannot be right that a man is the worse for having.

Where Example keeps pace with Authority, Power hardly fails to be obey'd.

True Godliness doesn't turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it. ...We have nothing that we can call our own; no, not our selves: for we are all but Tenants, and at Will, too, of the great Lord of our selves, and the rest of this great farm, the World that we live upon.

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.

Eat... to live, and do not live to eat.

Were the superfluities of a nation valued, and made a perpetual tax or benevolence, there would be more alms-houses than poor, schools than scholars, and enough to spare for government besides.

For though Death be a dark passage, it leads to immortality, and that is recompence enough for suffering of it.

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

The way, like the cross, is spiritual: that is an inward submission of the soul to the will of God, as it is manifested by the light of Christ in the consciences of men, though it be contrary to their own inclinations.

Man, being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects.

Next to God, thy parents.