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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• Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Eye, Atheism, Figs

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• The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

  Leland Ryken

  Wealth, Obsessed, Danger

  Leland Ryken (2010). “Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were”, p.22, Harper Collins

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex.

  Mary McCarthy

  Sex, Obsessed, Used

  "Lady with a Switchblade". Life Magazine, September 20, 1963.

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• The Puritans removed organs and paintings from churches, but bought them for private use in their homes.

  Leland Ryken

  Home, Church, Use

  Leland Ryken (2010). “Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were”, p.22, Harper Collins

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• We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Black And White, Thinking, Views

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• It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.

  Phillips Brooks

  Beautiful, God, Voice

  Phillips Brooks, Ellen Wilbur (2003). “The Consolations of God: Great Sermons of Phillips Brooks”, p.115, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• He was the mightiest of Puritans no less than of philistines who first insisted that beauty is only skin deep.

  Louis Kronenberger

  Beauty, Skins, Firsts

  Louis Kronenberger (1972). “A Mania for Magnificence”

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