Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

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

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

The country is both the philosopher’s garden and his library, in which he reads and contemplates the power, wisdom, and goodness of God.
William Penn
Topics: Country

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
William Penn
Topics: Innocence, Virtue, Virtues

To be like Christ is to be a Christian.
William Penn
Topics: Christianity, Christians

Death is only an horizon, and an horizon is only the limit of our sight. Open our eyes to see more clearly … .
William Penn
Topics: Death

There is truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.
William Penn

Silence is Wisdom where Speaking is Folly.
William Penn
Topics: Silence

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.
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: Health, Drunkenness

Five things are requisite to a good officer—ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.
William Penn

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided.
William Penn
Topics: Promises

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.
William Penn
Topics: Ambition, Fortune

It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature, whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.
William Penn
Topics: Nature

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

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

He that lives in love lives in god, says the beloved disciple: and to be sure a man can live no where better.
William Penn

Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.
William Penn
Topics: Promises

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.
William Penn
Topics: Truth, Temper, Arguments, Anger

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

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

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody’s.
William Penn
Topics: Vanity, Fools

All we have is the Almighty’s, and shall not God have his own when he calls for it?
William Penn

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.
William Penn

It is the difference betwixt lust and love, that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, lust wastes, by enjoyment; and the reason is, that one springs from a union of souls, and the other springs from a union of sense.
William Penn
Topics: Enjoyment

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.
William Penn

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

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
William Penn
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties, Discipline, Life, Pain

It is most reasonable men should value that benefit, which is most durable. Now tongues shall cease, and prophecy fail, and faith shall be consummated in sight, and hope in enjoyment; but love remains.
William Penn

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he that has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.
William Penn
Topics: Fathers, Family, Father, Wisdom, Economy

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