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

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

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.
—William Penn
Topics: Conversation

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

All humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear make them strangers.
—William Penn
Topics: Religion, Humility

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all; to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.
—William Penn

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

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.
—William Penn

Show is not substance; realities govern wise men.
—William Penn

But make not more business necessary than is so; and rather lessen than augment work for thyself.
—William Penn
Topics: Work

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

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

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

Next to God, thy parents.
—William Penn
Topics: Parents

The only gratification a covetous man gives his neighbors, is, to let them see that he himself is as little better for what he has, as they are.
—William Penn

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

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

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: Temper, Anger, Arguments, Truth

Where judgment has wit to express it, there is the best orator.
—William Penn
Topics: Wit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patience and Diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
—William Penn
Topics: Patience, Perseverance

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.
—William Penn
Topics: Government

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.
—William Penn
Topics: Temptation

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

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