Puritan Quotes - Page 4

• The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Character, Greatness, Choices

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1854). “Memoirs of celebrated characters”, p.157

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• We have the reverse of the Puritan work ethic in America now. No one ever becomes a star by plugging along year after year. What is needed is flair, talent, 'an eye,' contacts, charisma, and, most of all, naturalness.

  Judith Martin

  Stars, Eye, Years

  Judith Martin (1986). “Style and substance: a comedy of manners”, Scribner

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• Christianity ... has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on the rack; all this it has done, and done in the name of God.

  Ouida

  Religious, War, Soul And Body

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• Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or at the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this, and thrust Beauty out of the meeting-house and slammed the door in her face.

  James Russell Lowell

  Eye, Doors, House

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.76

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• Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Religious, Political, Liberty

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1851). “Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.68

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• Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.

  George Santayana

  Writing, Adventure, Young Friends

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• For years Christians in particular have been attacked and silenced as they tried to challenge the immorality pervasive in today's society. When they tell people casual sex is wrong, they get the inevitable, "You got no right to tell me what I can or can't do. You don't get to define morality for me. It's none of your business what I do. Shut up." If they oppose sexual immorality in any form including adultery, they are maligned as sanctimonious Puritans who have not gotten with it in the twenty-first century. It's a long piece; it's well thought out.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Christian, Long, People

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' to the awful, final act of suicide, that those who 'fail' at killing themselves not only are weak, but incompetent, incapable even of getting their dying quite right.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Successful, Dying

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.72, Pan Macmillan

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• Why are there so many puritans in this country, and why can't the rest of us make them go away?!

  Bill Maher

  Country, Going Away

  Bill Maher (2005). “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer”, p.181, Rodale

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• American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

  John Updike

  Art, Self, Work Ethic

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• There is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction.

  Thomas Watson

  Adversity, Sea, Evil

  Thomas Watson “A Body of Divinity”, Lulu.com

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• My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

  Stephen Spender

  Brother, Names, Atmosphere

  1951 World within World, p.314-15.

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• With our sympathy for the wrongdoer we need the old Puritan and Quaker hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a righteous abhorrence of sin.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Men, Hatred, Tolerance

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1975). “The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier: 1828-1845”, p.238, Harvard University Press

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• A society that is not founded on morality falls apart and becomes easy prey to puritan cults such as Islam that on the surface, promote family values and morality.

  Ali Sina

  Fall, Islam, Morality

  Source: myislam.dk

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• Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle however do.

  J. I. Packer

  Struggle, Maturity, Luxury

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• Without a sense of the shame or guilt of his or her action, the child will only be hardened in rebellion by physical punishment. Shame (and praise) help the child to internalize the parent's judgment. It impresses upon the child that the parent is not only more powerful but also right. Like the Puritans, Locke (in 1690), wanted the child to adopt the parent's moral position, rather than simply bow to superior strength or social pressure.

  C. Sommerville

  Powerful, Children, Punishment

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• The Pilgrim and the Puritan whom we honor tonight were men who did a great deal of work in the world. They had their faults and their - shortcomings, but they were not slothful in business and they were most fervent in spirit.

  Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

  Men, Glowing, Sloth

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• [17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child's duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.

  C. Sommerville

  Children, Commitment, Self

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• The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment but as a force; why was she unknownin America? for evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but anyone brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength.

  Henry Adams

  Sex, Women, Humorous

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• The summum bonum of this [Puritan] ethic is the earning of more and more money combined with the strict avoidance of all enjoyment.

  Max Weber

  Earning, Ethics, More Money

  Max Weber (2012). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth
  Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,--
  Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,--
  Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.

  Bayard Taylor

  Blue, Color, Tree

  Bayard Taylor (1875). “Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics”, p.33

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• The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.

  Wendell Phillips

  Thinking, Soul, Religion

  Wendell Phillips (1969). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters, Second Series”, Ayer Company Pub

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• To live without that enchantment of beauty is to interpret frugality and simple living with a puritan literalism

  John Lane

  Simple, Enchantment, Frugality

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• I think we're very uptight in America. You have to remember that we're descended from Puritans. Whether or not the country is now composed of immigrants, our culture as American really begins with the landing of the Pilgrims and a puritanical view of things.

  Tom Ford

  Country, Thinking, America

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• I'm very pessimistic about adaptations from one medium to another. I've got a very kind of primitive, Puritan view of it. I tend to think that if something was derived for one medium, then there's no real immediate reason to think that it's necessarily going to be as good or better if adapted into another one. There have been very good stage plays that have made some very good films. But there are not so many differences between the theater and the cinema as there are between the cinema and, say, reading a book or reading a comic.

  Alan Moore

  Real, Book, Reading

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