Puritan Quotes

Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.

— Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

“My passionate puritan!”

— Violet Winspear

Art is hard for a puritan to understand.

— Gunter Grass

The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains.

— Anonymous

It's not a performance to impress the Puritans

— Martin Tyler

The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.

— Wendell Phillips

The Puritan sours his pleasures by disguising them as duties.

— Mason Cooley

I'm far too outspoken to be a woman in Puritan times.

— Janet Montgomery

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

— Oscar Wilde

“You know you're a Puritan when you feel that even the Bible needs to be cleaned up.”

— James Maguire

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

— Anonymous

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

— Francisco Costa

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

— Samuel Rutherford

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

— Mignon McLaughlin

“A Puritan is not against bullfighting because of the pain it gives the bull, but because of the pleasure it gives the…

— H.L. Mencken

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

— Anonymous

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or…

— James Hillman

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

— Gunter Grass

Nietzsche, to the end of his days, remained a Russian pastor's son, and hence two-thirds of a Puritan; he erected his war…

— H. L. Mencken

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

— John Flavel

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

— Adam Nicolson

The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No…

— H. L. Mencken

“For a close, remember this, that your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint…

— Thomas Brooks

Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW):…

— Oscar Wilde

I think our society is fragmented. Messages regarding human sexuality have always been mixed in America. We are a schizophrenic nation. We…

— Hugh Hefner

We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the…

— Ralph Caplan

England is, after all, the land where children are beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss…

— Colin MacInnes

No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the…

— Leland Ryken

I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought…

— Robert Henri

“Father Brown smiled faintly. ‘I suppose in one sense,’ he said, ‘it was a matter of special knowledge; almost a professional matter,…

— G.K. Chesterton

The new puritans have been highly successful. All of the preconditions for new prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco are in place. ...…

— Mark Thornton

England is, after all, the land where children were beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss…

— Colin MacInnes

And so it is that I carry with me from this State to that high and lonely office to which I now…

— John F. Kennedy

What was it that obliged Jerome to write his book, Concerning Illustrious Men? It was the common reproach of old cast upon…

— Cotton Mather

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

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Puritanism prolonged in America the medieval Christian view of the world and of human destiny. It taught men to distrust their natural…

— Ralph Barton Perry

When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld…

— William Carey

My father was the classic Puritan. Hold the emotions in check. Keep up appearances.

— Lee Marvin

Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons.

— Stephen Charnock

Affliction may be lasting, but it is not everlasting.

— Thomas Watson