Puritan Quotes - page 2
Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no favors to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The puritans abandoned the New Testament in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead architecture where it belongs.
Henry Adams
The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart. It was accepted by New England, and it poisoned the souls and ruined the lives of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make the theology of Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there is nothing, outside of the "sacred books,” more perfectly absurd.
Robert G. Ingersoll
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
There's no redder rag for our modern, progressive Catholics than a certain religious approach to sex and Eros ranging from suspicion to open condemnation and branded accordingly as Manichean, neo-Platonic, Puritan, etc. Quite unacceptable. And yet in these quite obviously heretical speculations there's a barb which, even at first encounter, penetrated to the depths of my mind as the startling confirmation of something always known, and this ferment keeps on working - all the time...the idea which one finds in so many apocryphal trends of thought, i. e. that there's definitely something wrong with sex in its present form, that is, during this terrestrial aeon - something that is not sex in itself, as a whole, but some trait or quality.. Something which does not belong to original human nature, but which owes its actual existence to The Fall; in the same sense unnatural as death is unnatural and yet taken for granted, an inevitable, undeniable factor - in this fallen world.
Ida Friederike Görres
Trochu's Vianney book makes me shudder. Positively frightening - and the saint too. The first time I read it I was quite horrified...Actually he is a second Simeon Stylites - and how hard and stern he is - and not only against himself: he would excommunicate his parishioners if they even once went dancing or drinking - like the most rigorous Puritan..For him sin involved personal, direct single combat with Satan...But there's no glove to Vianney's peasant fist. He's really gruesome.
Ida Friederike Görres
The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours. Exploiting the apocalypse, selling the holocaust, is a pornography. For the ultimate selling job on ultimate violence one must read those works of fiction issued by our government as manuals of civil defense, in which you learn that there's nothing to be afraid of if you've stockpiled lots of dried fruit.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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
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Okinawa squash, reg. $0.89 $0.75!
Penguin eggs (low on DDT, PCB), reg. $6.35 doz. $6.05!
Pacific potatoes (unwashed), reg. $0.89 lb. $0.69!
Butter from sunny New Zealand, reg. $1.35 qrt. $1.15!
YOU TOO CAN AFFORD GOOD HEALTH AT PURITAN!
John Brunner
The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation - Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness - the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure.
John N. Gray
