William Penn Quotes
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Experience is a safe guide.
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Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other.
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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.
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It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into, and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves and of the world they have lived in.
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To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
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Neither despise nor oppose what thou dost not understand.
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They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies.
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Sense shines with double lustre when set in humility.
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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.
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If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God, and to do that, thou must be ruled by him. Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.
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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.
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Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
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There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom.
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Though our Savior's passion is over, his compassion is not.
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Dislike what deserves it, but never hate: for that is of the nature of malice; which is almost ever to persons, not things, and is one of the blackest qualities sin begets in the soul. Dislike what deserves it, but never hate: for that is of the nature of malice; which is almost ever to persons, not things, and is one of the blackest qualities sin begets in the soul.
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Where charity keeps pace with gain, industry is blessed.
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Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
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A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving.
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To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.
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What man in his right mind would conspire his own hurt? Men are beside themselves when they transgress against their convictions.
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The only fountain in the wilderness of life, where man drinks of water totally unmixed with bitterness, is that which gushes for him in the calm and shady recess of domestic life.
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But make not more business necessary than is so; and rather lessen than augment work for thyself.
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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.
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Death cannot kill what never dies.