“Be plain in Clothes, Furniture and Food, but clean, and then the Coarser the better; the rest is Folly and a Snare.”

— William Penn, Advice to His Children (1699)

About William Penn

1644 – 1718

English Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, author of "Some Fruits of Solitude".

“Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.”

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

“Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”

“There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”