Puritan Quotes - Page 3

• For the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life.

  Leland Ryken

  Spiritual, Quests, Holiness

  Leland Ryken (2010). “Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were”, p.301, Harper Collins

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• Art is hard for a puritan to understand.

  Gunter Grass

  Art, Art Is, Hard

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• Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Eye, Atheism, Figs

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• The Puritans came to America to worship in their way and to force everybody else to do the same thing.

  Sam Levenson

  America, Superstitions, Way

  Sam Levenson (2016). “You Don't Have to Be in Who's Who to Know What's What: The Choice Wit and Wisdom of Sam Levenson”, p.131, Open Road Media

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• Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Inspirational, Positive, Christian

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• Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins.

  Thomas Brooks

  Men, Have Faith, Sin

  Thomas Brooks (1824). “The select works of ... Thomas Brooks”, p.477

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• Like the Puritans, live in terms of the settled judgement that the joy of heaven will make amends of any losses and crosses, strains and pains that we must endure on earth if we are going to follow Christ faithfully. Regard preparedness to die as the first step in learning to live.

  Joel Beeke

  Pain, Loss, Joy

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• Napping is too luxurious, too sybaritic, too unproductive, and it's free; pleasures for which we don't pay make us anxious. Besides, it seems to be a natural inclination. ... Fighting off natural inclinations is a major Puritan virtue, and nothing that feels that good can be respectable.

  Barbara Holland

  Sleep, Fighting, Pay

  "Literature,one screen at a time" by Alex Beam, www.nytimes.com. November 16, 2005.

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• I'm a Christian, but I'm not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].

  Cornel West

  Christian, Believe, Intellectual

  Source: genius.com

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• There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

  Sherwin Wine

  Religious, Father, Past

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• My wife is a real Puritan. She thinks licking the stamp on the envelope of a Valentine is foreplay.

  Milton Berle

  Real, Valentine, Thinking

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• That stern and rockbound coast felt like an amateur when it saw how grim the puritans that landed on it were.

  Don Marquis

  Atheism, Saws, Coast

  Don Marquis (2013). “The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel”, p.69, Doubleday

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• democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans. ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their philosophy.

  Anne Stevenson

  Philosophy, Thinking, Democracy

  ANNE STEVENSON “A RELATIVE STRANGER\”

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• A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religion, Atheism, Might

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• When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to horde their wealth while clinging to the ladder of 'success,' terrified to let go. That isn't real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness.

  Cal Thomas

  Letting Go, Real, Mean

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• America was first colonized by Puritans. Most of our earliest immigrants, and many since, have come here in order to practice their religious beliefs as they please. Our culture has always been, and will most likely always be, profoundly influenced by religion.

  James Frey

  Religious, Order, Practice

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• We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.

  Ralph Caplan

  Substance, Proud, Way

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• Well's them who are under crosses, and Christ says to them, "Half Mine."

  Samuel Rutherford

  Adversity, Half, Christ

  Samuel Rutherford (1885). “Quaint Sermons of Samuel Rutherford: Hitherto Unpublished”

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• I think our society is fragmented. Messages regarding human sexuality have always been mixed in America. We are a schizophrenic nation. We were founded initially by Puritans, who escaped repression only to establish their own. Then the founding fathers gave us the Constitution to separate church and state. But the one thing that got left out of all those laws was human sexuality.

  Hugh Hefner

  Father, Thinking, Church

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.

  R. H. Tawney

  Spiritual, Order, Reason

  R. H. Tawney (2016). “Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism”, p.197, Verso Books

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• Convinced that character is all and circumstances nothing, [the Puritan] sees in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion ... but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.

  R. H. Tawney

  Fall, Character, Blessing

  R. H. Tawney (2016). “Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism”, p.198, Verso Books

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• On many questions and specially in view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party, . . . they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries. The idea that a Puritan was a repressed and repressive person would have astonished Sir Thomas More and Luther about equally.

  C. S. Lewis

  Party, Views, Ideas

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Selected Literary Essays”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

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• Isn't the essential pillar of Catholicism papal infallibility? Well, then how can the church ever change its mind about anything unless God gets confused one day? Not all religions claim the direct authority of God speaking to their leader. You know, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Puritan atheist.

  Dave Foley

  Atheist, Confused, Leader

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• Certainly no valid answer is ever gained by excluding any factors of the problem; that was the Puritans' error.

  Tim Powers

  Errors, Answers, Problem

  Tim Powers (1997). “The Anubis Gates”, p.406, Penguin

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• The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Acceptance, Land, Violence

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.103, Grove Press

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