Puritan Quotes

• A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Righteous, Persons, Wrong Things

  The New York Times, November 21, 1930.

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• The puritan through life's sweet garden goes to pluck the thorn and cast away the rose.

  Kenneth Hare

  Sweet, Garden, Rose

  Kenneth Hare (1957). “Nymphs and Rivers: (a Selection from Poems Composed Between 1910 and 1957)”

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• Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.

  Thomas Watson

  Sunset, Godly, Night

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• Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

  H. L. Mencken

  God, Being Happy, Cynical

  A Mencken Chrestomathy ch. 30 (1949)

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• No doctrine is more excellent, or necessary to be preached and studied, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

  John Flavel

  Religious, Jesus, Christian Inspirational

  John Flavel (2014). “Fountain of Life: 1671”

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• Did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt but He will also finish His work in us.

  John Flavel

  Christian, Religious, Jesus

  John Flavel (1836). “The Fountain of Life Opened; Or, A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory. 1671”, p.351

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• Let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy of all our miseries. His cross hath procured a crown, his passion hath expiated our transgression. His death hath disarmed the law, his blood hath washed a believer's soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, and the eternal testimony of divine love.

  Stephen Charnock

  Happiness, Death, Christian

  "Christ Our Passover".

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• The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Pain, History, Religion

  "History of England". Volume I, Chapter II, 1849-1861.

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• Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?

  John Owen

  Christian, Running, Blessing

  John Owen (1904). “The Golden Book of John Owen: Passages from the Writings of the Rev. John Owen, M.A., D.D., Sometime Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Dean of Christ Church”

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• What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

  Wendell Phillips

  World, Action

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.229

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• The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.

  Leland Ryken

  Priorities In Life, Firsts, Theme

  Leland Ryken (2010). “Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were”, p.299, Harper Collins

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• In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.

  Leland Ryken

  Christian, Thinking, Energy

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• The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages-such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life!

  John Calvin

  Peaceful, Doe, Delight

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• The world and you must part, or Christ and you will never meet.

  Thomas Brooks

  Jesus, Dying, World

  Thomas Brooks, Jay Patrick Green, Sr. (2000). “A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold”, p.189, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

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• By all means read the Puritans, they are worth more than all the modern stuff put together.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mean, Together, Stuff

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• You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.

  James Young

  Country, Past, Four

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• Men of New England, I hold you to the doctrines of liberty which ye inherit from your Puritan forefathers.

  Caleb Cushing

  Men, Liberty, Doctrine

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• To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.

  D. H. Lawrence

  All Things

  'Etruscan Places' (1932) 'Cerveteri'

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• For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

  Howard Nemerov

  Class, Literature, Serious

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “Journal of the Fictive Life”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.

  Gore Vidal

  Mother, Country, America

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• In the history of extra-biblical study and research tools there has never before been a resource as useful as the Puritan Hard Drive.

  Paul Washer

  Biblical, Tools, Research

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• A puritan is such a one as loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbor with all his heart.

  Adam Nicolson

  Hate, Heart, Soul

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• The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place - but sinners after all.

  J. C. Ryle

  Father, Men, Needs

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• When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

  James Hillman

  Christian, Way, Tradition

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• The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains.

  William Henry O'Connell

  Catholic, Remains

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