Puritan Quotes - Page 6

• The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.

  John Burroughs

  God, Religion, Monsters

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• I don't mind plain women being puritans. It is the only excuse they have for being plain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mind, Excuse, Chastity

  Oscar Wilde (1986). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays”

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• My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.

  Garrison Keillor

  Law, America, England

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 30 Mar. 1990

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• If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Christian, Character, Practice

  "The Works of Benjamin Franklin".

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• We are to have no pictures which the puritan and the narrow, animated by an obsolete dogma, cannot approve of. We are to have no theaters no motion pictures, no books, no public exhibitions of any kind, no speech even which will anyway contravene his limited view of life.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Book, Views, Exhibitions

  Theodore Dreiser (1920). “Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life”

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• What I like is horror movies, including '80s slasher movies that politically I have all kinds of problems with. Which is an interesting balance, because I have this leftist puritan strain that, well, if you like something that goes against your politics, maybe you should train yourself not to like it. But I know that I like horror movies and that's what I watch when I get a moment.

  John Darnielle

  Interesting, Balance, Kind

  "What’s Got John Darnielle’s Goat?". Interview With Emma Silvers, www.motherjones.com. March 25, 2011.

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• As God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature's holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as [the] brightness of a jewel, held in the sun's beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun's brightness, though immensely less in degree.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Jewels, Degrees, Delight

  Jonathan Edwards (2015). “The End For Which God Created the World”, p.21, Ravenio Books

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• If God rewards us on earth for good deeds—the Old Testament suggests it’s so, and the Puritans certainly believed it—then maybe Satan rewards us for evil ones.

  Stephen King

  Evil, Earth, Deeds

  Stephen King (2011). “Full Dark, No Stars”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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• Very well then, better a sane crook than a mad puritan.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Mad, Crooks, Wells

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “Three Novels: Tender is the Night; The Beautiful and Damned; Thi”, p.286, Simon and Schuster

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• Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Pornography, Catholicism

  Richard Hofstadter (2016). “The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, p.17, Vintage

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• Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
  There's something in this richness that I hate.
  I love the look, austere, immaculate,
  Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

  Elinor Wylie

  Love, Hate, Looks

  Elinor Wylie, Evelyn Helmick Hively (2005). “Selected Works of Elinor Wylie”, p.18, Kent State University Press

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• It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.

  Aleister Crowley

  Crush, Country, Sex

  Aleister Crowley (2015). “Moonchild”, p.213, Booklassic

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• The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Book, Reading

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.)

  William Carey

  Strong, Overcoming, Triumph

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• Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

  Gunter Grass

  Art, Irrational, Hard

  New Statesman and Society interview, 1990.

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• We are very puritan in America. We still hold true to these really antiquated values, this idea of the sanctity of marriage.

  Zoe Lister-Jones

  Ideas, America, Sanctity Of Marriage

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• Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Thinking, Lds

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• England is, after all, the land where children are beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss Lash ply their trade as nowhere else in the western world.

  Colin MacInnes

  Football, Baby, Sweet

  "Out of the way: later essays".

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• It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice.

  Liam O'Flaherty

  Artist, Creative, Impossible

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• By natural means, as the Lord always operates for the accomplishment of his purposes, means so simple that the thoughtless and unbelieving do not see the manifestation of his power, he brought the Puritans from the old world to New England, the Dutch to New York, the English Cavaliers to Virginia and the French to New Orleans, a combination of races which, paradoxical as it may appear, was just calculated to give us the composite America who made the United States of America what it is, the greatest nation of the world today.

  Anthony W. Ivins

  New York, Mean, Simple

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• I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit's safety was in negation, but he has never given the world one minute's joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit became a prisoner.

  Robert Henri

  Beautiful, Sorry, Order

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Life, Believe, Disagreeable

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.95, BookBaby

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• If you have beautiful knees, show your knees. I'm not a puritan. I love skin.

  Francisco Costa

  Beautiful, Skins, Knees

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• In our most Puritan of society, gambling-like other pleasures-is either taxed, restricted to certain hours, or forbidden altogether. Yet the impulse to gamble remains an eternal aspect of the irrationality of man. It finds outlets in business, war, politics, in the formal overtures of the gambling casinos, and in the less ceremonious exchanges among individuals of differing opinions.

  Richard Arnold Epstein

  War, Men, Gambling

  "The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic". Book by Richard Arnold Epstein, Preface To The First Edition, 1977.

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• After all the Puritans came to America to escape from persecution and then turned around and started persecuting other people. So I understand that conflict that we have related to play and pleasure and sexuality. And I think what has made my life worthwhile is trying to deal with some of those questions.

  Hugh Hefner

  Thinking, Play, America

  "Hugh Hefner Reflects on Turning 80". "The Big Story" with John Gibson, www.foxnews.com. April 6, 2006.

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