Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Penn (English Quaker Leader)

William Penn (1644–1718) was an English Quaker. He established the colony of Pennsylvania and played a principal role in the history of New Jersey and Delaware. Penn also co-founded the city of Philadelphia.

The scion of a prosperous London family, Penn attended Oxford, studied law, and supervised the family’s estates before becoming a Quaker in the mid-1660s. For the rest of his life, Penn engaged in Quaker preaching and writing. He was jailed four times for publishing pamphlets about his religious beliefs.

In 1681, Penn convinced King Charles II to settle up a huge debt that the king owed Penn’s father by granting him the rough land in America that would become Pennsylvania. The following year, Penn leased and added the region now identified as Delaware.

Penn used his proprietary colony of Pennsylvania to settle Quakers and others seeking sanctuary from religious persecution. Pennsylvania remained a Penn family ownership until the American Revolutionary War (1775–83.)

In 1697, Penn proposed a federal union of the American colonies. He suggested creating a “congress” with two representatives from each colony.

In 1701, Penn granted the residents of Pennsylvania a “Charter of Privileges” that instituted a unicameral legislature and advanced colonial self-government. He also established Delaware as a separate colonial entity.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Penn

Passion may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot on his reason.
—William Penn
Topics: Passion

Did we believe a final reckoning and judgment; or did we think enough of what we do believe, we would allow more love in religion than we do; since religion it self is nothing else but love to god and man.
—William Penn

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.
—William Penn
Topics: Flattery

Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit down without one.
—William Penn
Topics: Appetite

If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch, indeed, who will not give them to him.—Such a disposition is like lighting another man’s candle by one’s own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.
—William Penn

All excess is ill; but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad. He that is drunk is not a man, because he is void of reason that distinguishes a man from a beast.
—William Penn
Topics: Drunkenness, Health

Nor yet be overeager in pursuit of any thing; for the mercurial too often happen to leave judgment behind them, and sometimes make work for repentance.
—William Penn
Topics: Work

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.
—William Penn
Topics: Zeal

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business; for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those who have business depending, what to do and what to hope.
—William Penn
Topics: Business

The truest end of life is to know the life that never ends.
—William Penn
Topics: Life

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.
—William Penn
Topics: Society, Marriage

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.
—William Penn
Topics: Envy, Jealousy

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.
—William Penn
Topics: Greed

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
—William Penn
Topics: Sympathy, Death, Eternity

Interest has the security, though not the virtue of a principle.—As the world goes, it is the surest side; for men daily leave both relations and religion to follow it.
—William Penn

Above all things endeavor to breed them up in the love of virtue, and that holy plain way of it which we have lived in, that the world in no part of it get into my family. I had rather they were homely, than finely bred as to outward behavior; yet I love sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety.
—William Penn
Topics: Children

Dislike what deserves it, but never hate, for that is of the nature of malice, which is applied to persons, not to things.
—William Penn
Topics: Hatred

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment is the treasurer of the one who is wise.
—William Penn
Topics: Knowledge

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
—William Penn
Topics: Democracy, Government

A private Life is to be preferrd; the Honour and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it.
—William Penn

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.
—William Penn
Topics: Praise

Content not thyself that thou art virtuous in the general; for one link being wanting, the chain is defective. Perhaps thou art rather innocent than virtuous, and owest more to thy constitution than to thy religion.
—William Penn
Topics: Virtue

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
—William Penn
Topics: God, Religion

Religion is the fear and love of God; its demonstration is good works; and faith is the root of both, for without faith we cannot please God; nor can we fear and love what we do not believe.
—William Penn
Topics: Religion

Excess in apparel is another costly folly.—The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked ones.
—William Penn

Nothing but a good life here can fit men for a better one hereafter.
—William Penn
Topics: Life

When thou art obliged to speak, be sure to speak the truth; for equivocation is half way to lying, and lying is the whole way to hell.
—William Penn
Topics: Lying

Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love.
—William Penn
Topics: Love

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.
—William Penn
Topics: The Past, Past

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
—William Penn
Topics: Marriage

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