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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  William Penn

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

William Penn

Cunning is to wisdom as an ape to a man.

Equivocation is half way to lying, and lying is the whole way to hell.

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

Frugality is good, if liberality be joined with it.

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

If we would amend the world, we should mend ourselves and teach our children what they should be.

It were better to be of no church than bitter for any.

Kings chiefly in this should imitate God; their mercy should be above all their works.

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment the treasurer, of a wise man.

Let nobility and virtue keep company, for they are nearest of kin.

Love labour; for if thou dost not want it for food, thou may’st for physic.

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

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

Passions may not unfitly be termed the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures and directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody’s.

To have religion upon authority, and not upon conviction, is like a finger-watch, to be set forwards or backwards, as he pleases that has it in keeping.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument, zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.