Top 200 William Penn Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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.”

— William Penn

102. “They that soar too high, often fall hard.”

— William Penn

103. “He who gives to the poor, lends to the Lord. But it may be said, not improperly, the Lord lends to us to give to the poor.”

— William Penn

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

— William Penn

105. “My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.”

— William Penn

106. “Religion is nothing else but love of God and man.”

— William Penn

107. “Never marry but for love; but see that thou lov’st what is lovely.”

— William Penn

108. “Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast. Yet it must be confessed that wit given an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.”

— William Penn

109. “This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.”

— William Penn

110. “Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.”

— William Penn

111. “Show is not substance; realities govern wise men.”

— William Penn

112. “It is a coal from God’s altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifice.”

— William Penn

113. “He that has more Knowledge than Judgment, is made for another Man’s use more than his own.”

— William Penn

114. “Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves: and perhaps that is the reason of it.”

— William Penn

115. “Religion is the fear of God, and its demonstration good works; and faith is the root of both: For without faith we cannot please God; nor can we fear what we do not believe.”

— William Penn

116. “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

117. “To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.”

— William Penn

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

— William Penn

119. “To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.”

— William Penn

120. “If thou wouldst be happy, bring thy mind to thy condition, and have an indifferency for more than what is sufficient.”

— William Penn

121. “Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.”

— William Penn

122. “Naked Truth needs no shift.”

— William Penn

123. “Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. Authority is for children and servants, yet not without sweetness.”

— William Penn

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

— William Penn

125. “If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.”

— William Penn

126. “There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.”

— William Penn

127. “It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.”

— William Penn

128. “Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good.”

— William Penn

129. “Clear therefore thy head, and rally, and manage thy thoughts rightly, and thou wilt save time, and see and do thy business well; for thy judgment will be distinct, thy mind free, and the faculties strong and regular.”

— William Penn

130. “Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.”

— William Penn

131. “Five things are requisite to a good officer – ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.”

— William Penn

132. “They that Marry for Money cannot have the true Satisfaction of Marriage; the requisite Means being wanting.”

— William Penn

133. “Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.”

— William Penn

134. “There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom.”

— William Penn

135. “The smaller the drink, the clearer the head, and the cooler the blood.”

— William Penn

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

— William Penn

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

— William Penn

138. “Friendship is the next pleasure we may hope for: and where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue.”

— William Penn

139. “If thou rise with an Appetite, thou art sure never to sit down without one.”

— William Penn

140. “The public must and will be served.”

— William Penn

141. “Make few resolutions, but keep them strictly.”

— William Penn

142. “It is the amends of a short and troublesome life, that doing good and suffering ill entitles man to a longer and better.”

— William Penn

143. “Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.”

— William Penn

144. “Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

— William Penn

145. “They have a right to censure that have a heart to help.”

— William Penn

146. “I have sometimes thought that people are, in a sort, happy, that nothing can put out of countenance with themselves, though they neither have nor merit other people’s.”

— William Penn

147. “Haste makes work which caution prevents.”

— William Penn

148. “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.”

— William Penn

149. “To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.”

— William Penn

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

— William Penn