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Puritanism   /pjˈʊrətənˌɪzəm/   Listen
Puritanism

noun
1.
The beliefs and practices characteristic of Puritans (most of whom were Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of England of its Catholic aspects).
2.
Strictness and austerity in conduct and religion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Puritanism" Quotes from Famous Books



... foreseen all this: that which he had not foreseen was that he himself would be caught in his own snare, and would be sincere in the role which he had so judiciously adopted. From the first, Madame de Tecle had captivated him. Her very puritanism, united with her native grace and worldly elegance, composed a kind of daily charm which piqued the imagination of the cold young man. If it was a powerful temptation for the angels to save the tempted, the tempted could not harbor with more delight ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... financial magnate, if it was brought home to him! He had not risen above his fellows without making enemies. He well knew the weakness and the strength of the British social system, with its strange complacency, its "allowances," its hysterical prudery, its queer amalgam of Puritanism and light hearted forbearance. He might gamble with loaded dice in the City, and people would applaud him as cleverer and shrewder than his opponents. His name might be coupled with that of a pretty ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... ultra-puritanism of the Argus might prevent the insertion of a letter bearing my signature. Therefore, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... quarrels between its officers and the majority of Parliament were frequent. Both Parliament and army had become unpopular, taxation was heavy, and religious disputes troublesome. The majority in Parliament had carried the national church so far in the direction of Puritanism that its excesses had brought about a strong reactionary feeling. Parliament had already sat for more than ten years, hence called the "Long Parliament," and had become corrupt and despotic. Under these circumstances, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... however, and therefore lacked the political dignities of a freeman; although his intimate relations with Master Joseph Rowlandson, and his personal connection with the earlier cases of church discipline in Lancaster, sufficiently attest the austerity of his puritanism. Doubtless Governor John Winthrop in his hasty and harsh dictum respecting the Nashaway planters, classed John Prescott among those "corrupt in judgment." But it must be remembered that in Winthrop's visionary commonwealth there was no room for liberty of conscience. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... legislators constantly took pains to remind them of the danger of allowing too much liberty to the appetites; but more effective than the counsels of philosophers and the threats of the law, great public calamities inspired in the masses, at least temporarily, a spirit of puritanism and austerity. Of this the consequences of the battle of Actium ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... that this blessed Mission is teaching men to talk cant and Puritanism. Speaking as a very cynical Loafer, I can only say that if Puritanism turns fishing fleets and fishing towns from being hells on earth into being decent places; if Puritanism heals the sick, comforts ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... England, as a body—her sovereigns and bishops, her clergy and laity—comes under the former designation; while those who sympathised with the Dissenters were comparatively few and weak. As soon as William was head of the Church, he opened the floodgates of Puritanism, and admitted into the church what previously had been more or less external to it. This element, thus made part and parcel of the Anglican Church, was denominated Low Church. William supplanted the bishops ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... sail in a sloop, to see Europe sink behind him, while he was serene in the faith of his dream; the later navigators of every prominent Christian race who explored the upper coasts; the Mayflower, with her cargo of sifted acorns from the hardy stock of British puritanism, and the ship, whose name we know not, that bore to Virginia the ancestors of Washington; the clearing of the wilderness, and the dotting of its clearings with the proofs of manly wisdom and Christian trust; then the gradual interblending ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... for this anomalous situation. One of them is our inheritance of a deep-rooted Puritan distrust of a liturgical service. That distrust is today a fetish and therefore much more potent that it was when it was a reason. Puritanism was born in the Reformation; it came out from the Roman church, where worship was regarded as an end in itself. To Catholic believers worship is a contribution to God, pleasing to Him apart from any effect it may have on ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... third time it seemed to me that the homely women looked cleverer than the pretty ones. Many of the girls or matrons were dressed far more daringly than they would have been a year or two before. Almost all of them were powdered and painted. Prosperity was rapidly breaking the chains of American Puritanism, rapidly "Frenchifying" the country, and the East Side was quick to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... a commonplace that the Restoration movement can only be understood when considered as a reaction against Puritanism. But it is insufficiently realised that the tyranny which half frustrated all the good work of Puritanism was of a very peculiar kind. It was not the fire of Puritanism, the exultation in sobriety, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This extravagance led of necessity to a reaction—in the North, of Puritanism; in the South, to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that most precious possession of the modern world, was never seriously imperilled by the classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance; nor, on the other hand, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... organization, nor prompted by any member of the Brotherhood. In the dialogue, the speaker whose opinions appear manifestly to represent those of Orchard himself is Christian, who is mostly backed up by Sophon. Christian forces ideas of purism or puritanism to an extreme, beyond anything which I can recollect as characterizing any of the P.R.B. His upholding of the painters who preceded Raphael as the best men for nurturing new and noble developments of art in our own day was ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... the love of adventure, the pride of dominance that we have now; but there was then a great interest in things of the mind as well, a lively taste for ideas, a love of beautiful things and thoughts. The Puritan uprising knocked all that on the head, but Puritanism was at least preoccupied with moral ideas, and developed an excitement about sin which was at all events a sign of intellectual ferment. And then we did indeed decline into a comfortable sort of security, into a stale classical tradition, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... there is much evidence. In England its manifestations are well marked for those whose eyes have once been opened. The manifestations are of the same character as those in Germany, modified by social and national differences, and especially by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and prudery of England.[112] In the United States these same influences exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of homosexuality. Hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the investigation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... supposed, that the ladies of the country assembled to witness this gallant strife, those excepted who held the stricter tenets of puritanism, and would therefore have deemed it criminal to afford countenance to the profane gambols of the malignants. Landaus, barouches, or tilburies, there were none in those simple days. The lord lieutenant of the county (a personage of ducal rank) alone pretended to the magnificence of a wheel-carriage, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... that the Revolution in the former country, though all religious worship disappears before it, does not seem to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical monuments, as the Reformation and the reign of Puritanism in the latter. I did not see a mutilated shrine, or even a broken-nosed image, in the whole cathedral. But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at them, were symptoms of sincerer religious faith than the French ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... courtiers and their imitators, the beggars and the sharpers, are those of whom we hear most; but the greater part of the population, that which controlled the city government, was of the middle class, sober, self-respecting tradespeople, inclined towards Puritanism, and jealous of their independence. Such people naturally distrusted and disliked the actors and their class, and used against them, as far as they could, the great authority of the city. In spite of court favor, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... the winner of the Derby is believed to have inspired Mr. LLOYD GEORGE with an idea of combining his present policy of always going one, if not two or three, better than the Old Man with a public demonstration of the extent to which the crude Puritanism of his youth has been mellowed by sympathies more in keeping with his later political alliances. He is credited with the intention of putting to appropriate use his peculiar gifts of non-committal prophecy and persuasive casuistry, and at the same time making ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various

... no place of resort but the tap-room or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us—so well has it succeeded in materializing and binding down to the earth the imagination of men, for which God has made another world (which certain statesmen take but too little into account)—that fair and beautiful world ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... old families and destroying the noblest names. There has always belonged to the London merchant a great respect for personal character and conduct. We are accustomed to regard this as a survival of Puritanism. This is not so: it existed before the arrival of Puritanism: it arose in the time when the men in the wards knew each other and when the master of many servants set the example, because his life was visible to all, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... for instance, in customs of society, in politics, in trade, and especially in amusements—the nearer they can come to the un-Christian world, the more 'broad' (save the mark!) and 'superior to prejudice' they are. 'Puritanism,' not only in theology, but in life and conduct, has come to be at a discount in these days. And it seems to be by a great many professing Christians thought to be a great feat to walk as the mules on the Alps do, with one foot over the path and the precipice down below. Keep away ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Paris. You can see the very place from my roof here, on bright days. These men, Mr. Denis, were our masters. Do not be misled by what you are told of the wanton luxury of those shores; do not forget that your view of that age has filtered through Roman stoicism and English puritanism which speak with envy lurking at their hearts—the envy of the incomplete creature for him who dares express himself. A plague has infected the world—the plague of repression. Don't you think that the man who made this Faun ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... self-searching, ever looking inwardly, and judging harshly, magnifying, through the greatness of its ideal of virtue, every failing into a crime. The natural result of these ideas seething in a brain which had little other food was Puritanism: the subordination of all other interests of life to the attainment of a spiritual condition acceptable in the sight of God. Following this aim with feverish intentness, and tortured by a conscience of extreme tenderness, the Puritans naturally cast aside the pleasures of this life ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... about how Tommy was drowned for fishing on the Sabbath, or Sammy struck by lightning for going out after dark. Now these moral stories are immoral, because Calvinism is immoral. They are wrong, because Puritanism is wrong. But they are not quite so wrong, they are not a quarter so wrong, as many superficial sages ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... budgeting, nursing and educating on an income which slipped unrewardingly away until she assumed control. She had learned Greek and Latin to help the boys with their home-work and had trained their characters in an austere school of aggressive Puritanism. If she were a little intolerant, at least she reared her children to a lofty sense of honour, a cold chastity of life and speech and a fierce refusal to compromise where truth or personal reputation was concerned. Thanks to her, three boys and one girl ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... to answer for in England," said Elisabeth; "we have to thank Puritanism for teaching men that only by hurting themselves can they please their Maker, and that God has given them tastes and hopes and desires merely in order to mortify the same. And it is all false—utterly false. The God ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... admiration which was accorded by the public at large to his commercial enterprise and financial sagacity, created a peculiar bitterness in the opposition that was organized against him at Westminster. As the high mountains are intersected by deep valleys, as puritanism in one age begets infidelity in the next, as in many countries the thickness of the winter's ice will be in proportion to the number of the summer musquitoes, so was the keenness of the hostility displayed on this occasion in proportion to the warmth of the support which ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... flourish of trumpets at the Vatican. Lord John's ecclesiastical appointments called forth sharp criticism. He was a Protestant of the old uncompromising type, with leanings towards advanced thought in Biblical criticism. He knew, moreover, what Puritanism had done for the English nation in the seventeenth century, and made no secret of his conviction that it was the Nonconformists, more than any other class, who had rendered civil and religious liberty possible. He moreover knew that in his own time they, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... ominous for Puritanism, not only in New England but in old England as well. That year saw the flight of the greatest number of emigrants across the sea, for the persecution in England was at its height, the Puritan aristocracy was suffering in its estates, and Puritan divines were everywhere silenced ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... personal interest as reformers and to the cause of reform. Reform exclusively as a moral protest and awakening is condemned to sterility. Reformers exclusively as moral protestants and purifiers are condemned to misdirected effort, to an illiberal puritanism, and to personal self-stultification. Reform must necessarily mean an intellectual as well as a moral challenge; and its higher purposes will never be accomplished unless it is accompanied by a ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... middle path only serves to show how heavily the difficulties of the common interpretation press on those who maintain it. Having confessed, according to the terms of the text, that the field or ground is not the Church, but the world, he proceeds, with a very strong animus against what he calls puritanism or separatism,[14] to argue in the usual way against every attempt to purify the visible Church except by the exclusion of persons who are notoriously heretical or vicious. The grounds on which he pleads against separation from the impure, in as far as this ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... cause is Puritanism; but not Puritanism merely in the sense of Prohibitionism. The truth is that prohibitions might have done far less harm as prohibitions, if a vague association had not arisen, on some dark day of human unreason, between ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... with a player-king and queen. The London theatres reopened under royal patronage, and in the provinces the stroller was abroad. He had his enemies, no doubt. Prejudice is long-lived, of robust constitution. Puritanism had struck deep root in the land, and though the triumphant Cavaliers might hew its branches, strip off its foliage, and hack at its trunk, they could by no means extirpate it altogether. Religious zealotry, strenuous and stubborn, however narrow, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... by education and conviction inclined to Republicanism and Puritanism. In America they have both. But I confess I feel a little staggered as to the practical efficacy and saving grace of first principles, when I ask myself, Can they throughout the United States from ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... must be made literature and not religious dogmatism. That it can be so treated and yet retain the full strength of its power for good is best illustrated in the works of Miss Wilkins. Nearly every one of her stories possesses a strong element of New England Puritanism, but there is no attempt to ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... Ages and in the eyes of the Protestant reformers the two great divisions of the Bible continued to command equal respect and attention. From the Old Testament and its reflection in the teachings of Paul, Puritanism and the theology of the past three centuries derived most of that which revealed their strength as well as their weakness. From the law, the prophets, and the book of Proverbs they drew their stern spirit of justice, their zeal for righteousness, and their uncompromising condemnation of everything ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... him half angrily. 'My dear Ernest,' he said, in a severer voice than he often used, 'the time has gone by now for this economical puritanism of yours. It won't do any longer. You have to think of your child and of Mrs. Le Breton. Your first duty is to earn a livelihood for them and yourself; when you've done that satisfactorily, you may begin to think of the claims of humanity. Don't be vexed with me, my dear fellow, if ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... introduce 'tests,' generally with the most disenchanting results. The old researchers were animated by the desire to establish the tottering faith of the Restoration, which was endangered by the reaction against Puritanism. Among the fruits of Puritanism, and of that frenzied state of mind which accompanied the Civil War, was a furious persecution of 'witches'. In a rare little book, Select Cases of Conscience, touching Witches and Witchcraft, by John Gaule, 'preacher of the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... for Cardinal Woolsey. It is not of extraordinary size, but was woven in the interesting years hovering above and below the century mark of 1500. The time was when public favour spoke for the upholding of morality with a conspicuousness which could be called Puritanism, were the anachronism possible. Pointing a moral was the fundamental excuse for pictorial art. This tapestry represents one of The Seven Deadly Sins. Hampton Court displays the three other known pieces of the series, and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... every village, so they say, and blank warrants, duly signed, in every sheriff's court, ready to be filled in with any name that malice may suggest. These men mean that Puritanism shall be rooted out of England. We cannot be ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... extinct. One has but to remember the famous well at Auray, or the sacred fountain in the crypt of the church at St. Melars, to which whole crowds of pilgrims still resort, to realise how far this is from being the case. Scotland herself, for all her centuries of Puritanism, has not wiped her slate quite clean; still less the countries like Ireland and Brittany, which are so retentive of the past. Nay, the present age is not content with its liberal supply of sacred springs, it must be adding new ones of its own! Let Lourdes be witness. And who shall say ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... consumed very little of it in practice. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion. There grew round the non-consumption of the cake all those instincts of puritanism which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world and has neglected the arts of production as well as those of enjoyment. And so the cake increased; but to what end was not clearly contemplated. Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to defer, and to cultivate ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... Andalusia—a beauty perhaps not in accordance with the standard of taste acknowledged in the icy northland. The vigolite upon her upper lip might look a little bizarre in an assemblage of Saxon dames, just as her sprightly spirit would offend the sentiment of a strait-laced Puritanism. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... them, so an Establishment which has produced Hooker, Barrow, Butler, has done more to moralise and ennoble English statesmen and their conduct than communities which have produced the Nonconformist divines. The fruitful men of English Puritanism and Nonconformity are men who were trained within the pale of the Establishment,—Milton, Baxter, Wesley. A generation or two outside the Establishment, and Puritanism produces men of national mark no more. With the same doctrine and discipline, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... Deep, serious faith, or there may be a slight touch of irony in the word, with a glance at the gloomy faith of early puritanism and its ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... indeed, I can never enough admire her beauty. And here was "Bartholomew Fayre," [A Comedy, by Ben Jonson; first acted in 1614.] with the puppet-showe, acted to day, which had not been these forty years, (it being so satyricall against puritanism, they durst not till now, which is strange they should already dare to do it, and the King do countenance it,) but I do never a whit like it the better for the puppets, but rather the worse. Thence home with the ladies, it being by reason of our staying a great while for the King's ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... that Puritanism was organised as a distinct school, if not also as a distinct party, in the church. If it had done nothing more than what it was honoured to do in the few peaceful years our fathers were permitted to spend in that much loved city by the bright blue waters of the Leman Lake, it would ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... pruriency; and it is this fact, that freedom in the artistic presentation of the sexual problems has invariably led to license, which has in many successive ages of literature forced the artist back to restraint, and has made him content to be bound by a rigid puritanism. In the beat of the eternal pendulum of taste it seems ordained that puritanism shall become so very puritanic that art shall grow tired of its bonds, and that liberty in turn shall grow offensive, and shall compel art by an overmastering ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... wonderfully American. That tender and gracious "penchant" of his for pure-souled and modest-minded young men, for their high resolves, their noble renunciations, their touching faith, is an indication of how much he has exploited—in the completest aesthetic sense—the naive puritanism ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... seasons and echoed in corresponding floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving- man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always colored by the petals of his flowers,—and Nature never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... which still marks the greatest of American cities, making much of it a patchwork of races and languages, and giving to the electric stir of Broadway an air which suggests a Continental rather than an English city, but it is more plausible to note that New York had no original link with the Puritanism of New England and of the North generally, and that in fact we shall find the premier city continually isolated from the North, following a tradition and a policy ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... became James I of England. By his accession the two countries were united under one sovereign, but each retained its own Parliament, its own National Church, and its own laws.[4] The new monarch found himself ruler over three kingdoms, each professing a different religion. Puritanism prevailed in Scotland, Catholicism in Ireland, Anglicanism or Episcopacy ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... Salem that was once the capital of the state, the Salem of John Endicott and Roger Williams, of stern Puritanism, of terrible witchcraft horrors, and then of the sturdy and vigorous stand in her differences with the mother country, her patriotism through the darkest days, was fast fading away, just as this grand commercial epoch was destined to merge into science and educational ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... "His boyhood," writes Roswell, "was similar to that of other boys brought up with the best surroundings in a Massachusetts village, where the college atmosphere prevailed. He had his boyish pleasures and his trials, his share of that queer mixture of nineteenth century worldliness and almost austere Puritanism, which is yet characteristic ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... "enlarging his Majesty's Empire," and at the same time to provide in Maryland a refuge for his fellow Catholics. These were now in England so disabled and limited that their status might fairly be called that of a persecuted people. The mounting Puritanism promised no improvement. The King himself had no fierce antagonism to the old religion, but it was beginning to be seen that Charles and Charles's realm were two different things. A haven should be provided before the storm blackened further. Baltimore thus saw put into his hands a high and ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... dreamed of the rights of man in peace and war, and Guido and Rubens were painting the joys of the manger or the sorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwell would consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a sword which should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to the throne of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for an hour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With that volume in their homes, the Swede and the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... long procession of factory workers, each morning and evening, the young walk almost as wearily and listlessly as the old. Young people working in modern factories situated in cities still dominated by the ideals of Puritanism face a combination which tends almost irresistably to overwhelm the spirit of youth. When the Puritan repression of pleasure was in the ascendant in America the people it dealt with lived on farms and villages where, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... sentiment of our day is to make an idol of the great figure-head of Puritanism. We had lately (April 25, 1899) a celebration of the Tercentenary of Cromwell; in the place of his birth he has been made use of (by a strange stroke of irony) as an apostle of education. Projects are on foot for erecting ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... judgment, were better people than the preachers. They had in them more humanity, more real goodness and more appreciation of beauty, of tenderness, of generosity and of heroism. Probably no religion was ever more thoroughly hateful than Puritanism. But all religionists who believe in an eternity of pain would naturally be opposed to everything that makes this life better; and, as a matter of fact, orthodox churches have been the enemies of painting, of sculpture, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... black rabbits to brown for numbers. For the truth on morality in France we must go back, I suspect, to that general conclusion about the French character—the swift passage from head to heart and back again, which, prohibiting extremes of puritanism and of licence, preserves a sort ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... has abandoned faith in its duty, it is conscious of no solemn obligations, but it still remains for the multitude a true aristocracy, and looking up at that aristocracy, for its standards, the multitude has become materialistic, throwing Puritanism to the dogs, and pushing as heartily forward to the trough as any full-fed glutton in the middle or the upper ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... is a loyal supporter of everything that is safe in social and recreational life. It is subject to the control of the community in the same way as the school; excessive puritanism need not be feared under its auspices more than under the auspices of ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... speculative foundations. Under these circumstances, it is not wonderful that, in this country, practical men preferred the Gospel of Wesley and Whitfield to that of Jean Jacques; while enough of the old leaven of Puritanism remained to ensure the favour and support of a large number of religious men to a revival of evangelical supernaturalism. Thus, by degrees, the free-thinking, or the indifference, prevalent among us ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... sacred to his fellow. The more grand and far-reaching are the divine claims, the greater is our conception of the scope and worth of being. Human rights become respected in the ratio in which human responsibility is felt. Whatever objections men may hold to Puritanism—their theory since the days of St. Augustine has constantly produced tendencies to liberty and a prevalent belief in the natural rights of man—and on account of that very feature which to many, has been ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... Puritanism in relation to American art, Mr. Gutzen Burglum said: "Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical for so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... or define the disapproval. The wedding journey was invented to escape the "jokes." The rice and old shoes will soon be tabooed. The mores fluctuate in their prescriptions. If the limits are too narrow, there is an overflow into vice and abuse, as was proved by seventeenth-century puritanism in England. If the limit is too remote, there is no discipline, and the regulation fails of its purpose. Then a corruption of manners ensues. In the cases now to be given we shall see the power of the mores to give validity to various customs. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... rising came to a head in the Eastern counties, where however the religious question was not involved. In that part of the country, destined to be the head-quarters of puritanism, the new ideas had made early way with the population; and Ket, the leader of the rising, conducted it on the hypothesis that his followers were merely enforcing legal rights because the agents of the Government neglected to do so. A great camp was formed at Mousehold ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... she could look back with calmness and justice on all the stages she had left behind. With her cousin Miriam she could sympathize in a way impossible to Spence, who, by-the-bye, somewhat misrepresented his wife in the account he gave to Mallard of their Sunday experiences. Puritanism was familiar to her by more than speculation; in the compassion with which she regarded Miriam there was no mixture of contempt, as in her husband's case. On the other hand, she did not pretend to read completely her con sin's heart and mind; she knew that there was no simple key to Miriam's ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... ear, that he was a better patriot than subject, and over-popular in parliament, where he had gone so far as to complain that many subsidies were granted and few grievances redressed. Another strong ground of royal displeasure existed in the imputation of puritanism under which he labored. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... implying that, as all other Cromwellian authorities are 'stupidities and falsities,' he alone was wise and true. This was but a risky basis on which to exhibit 'this Oliver' to the world, as the noblest Hero 'among the noblest of Human Heroisms, this English Puritanism of ours,' and as 'not a Man of falsehoods, but a Man of truths.' But reading over these words, and calling to mind the confidence with which Carlyle compels all to join with him in his Cromwell-worship, it is impossible to resist the conviction, that it was with good ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... for weakness—or let us say a cutting edge—but the old vulgar monosyllabic words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax—and Mark was like that. Then I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake. Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself—no more obscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... listen, may be heard, also, the voices of men who are weary of the valleys and the swamps, and who long to climb the heights and pierce the clouds that hold their vision from the skies. We need a new Puritanism, and it must not be a Puritanism principally of prohibitions, as was the old. It must be a Puritanism in which all the glories possible to heart and mind and soul are set forth in charm ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... 'During all the time of her life, which was till October, 1633, we lived very lovingly; I frequenting no company at all; my exercises were angling, in which I ever delighted; my companions, two aged men.' 'I frequented lectures, and leaned in judgment to Puritanism; and in October, 1627, I was made free of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... church teaches you in earnest. Religion should no more be taken without salt than radishes. The church inculcates it to excuse its own existence, but you certainly are reasonable enough to outgrow this old-fashioned Puritanism." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than their statues. Another, with a commanding position and every trick of British farce and Parisian drama at his fingers' ends, finally could not write without a sermon to preach, and yet could not find texts more fundamental than the hypocrisies of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial speculation which makes our young actresses as careful of their reputations as of their complexions. A third, too tenderhearted to break our spirits with the realities of a bitter experience, coaxed a wistful pathos ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... Work, work, work, is their day and their life. They are thoroughly ungenial, and have that air of suspicion in speaking of every one which is not unusual in the land of their ancestors. Thomas Chalmers is the man's ecclesiastical hero, in spite of his own severe Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two wretched horses, a fairly good bronco mare, a mule, four badly-bred cows, four gaunt and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly active habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... a hill," and was the leader of the high-church party. Algrind is Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, head of the low-church party, who in 1578 was sequestrated for writing a letter to the queen on the subject of puritanism. Thomalin represents the puritans. This could not have been written before 1578, unless the reference to Algrind was added in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... in Mr. Foster's place." Ward in his work on the Gresham Professors,[572] suppresses the reason, and the suppression lowers the character of his book. Foster was expelled in 1636, and re-elected on a vacancy in 1641, when Puritanism ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... occur? in religion, for example, was there not a similar popular crudity, as it is termed by some, a vulgarity as others name it, in the Methodist movement, in the Presbyterian movement, in the Protestant movement, world-wide? Was English Puritanism free from the same sort of characteristics, the things that are unrefined as belong to democratic politics in another sphere? The method, the phenomena, are those that belong to life universal, if life be free and efficient in moving masses of men upward into more noble ranges. Men of the people ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... Mehitable, his wife, a son was born who was subsequently named Willard. The father and mother were by no means sentimental people—they were certainly not given to seeing the poetical side of life; they were plain, earnest people, rough hewn out of the coarse fibre of Puritanism, but the advent of this little child brought a joy to their hearts that had its softening influence upon the home in which he ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... have been treated as warnings sent from on high, both in earlier times, when a Church better braced for the due performance of its never-ending task, eagerly interpreted to awful ears the signs of the wrath of God, and by a later generation, leavened in spirit by the self-searching morality of Puritanism. But from the sorely-tried third quarter of the fourteenth century the solitary voice of Langland cries, as the voice of Conscience preaching with her cross, that "these pestilences" are the penalty of sin and of naught else. It is assuredly presumptuous for one generation, without the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river gods was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too apparent. And Lycidas was probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence; because every word and phrase and line were sonorous, ringing and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... highly cultivated country which spread around it, and gave rise to a gallant breed of yeomen. From time immemorial the town had been a rallying-point for the party of liberty, and for many years it had leaned to the side of Republicanism in politics and of Puritanism in religion. No place in the kingdom had fought more stoutly for the Parliament, and though it had been twice besieged by Goring, the burghers, headed by the brave Robert Blake, had fought so desperately, that the Royalists had been compelled each time to retire ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... happiness. Its bent has lain in directions that are, superficially at all events, less attractive. But by its cult of cleanliness, self-control, and efficiency, it has given a new meaning to civilization; it has invented Puritanism, the gospel of the day's work, and the water-closet. These reflections may not seem very apposite to the subject of the Canal; but they will suggest themselves to one who arrives in Panama after traveling through the Latin States ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... asked why that age encouraged immorality which no other age would have tolerated, we have no hesitation in answering that this great depravation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism under ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... tinge of Puritanism in Dr. Sill's Christianity which to some minds imported an unnecessary strictness of view, but none could quarrel with it, for he practised his austerities upon himself, not toward others. Certain precepts of the Sermon on the Mount usually interpreted ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... known the situation of this troubled heart, her inheritance of New England Puritanism would hardly have protected the poor girl from the pious strategy of those good fathers. Knowing, as they do, how to work each proper engine, it would have been ultimately impossible for Hilda to resist the attractions of a faith, which so ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Imanuel Colleges were called by Archbishop Laud "the nurseries of Puritanism." The college-book of Sidney Sussex contains this record: "Oliver Cromwell of Huntingdon was admitted as an associate on the 26th day of April, 1616. Tutor Richard Howlet." He had just completed his seventeenth year. Cromwell's father dying the next year, and leaving but a small estate, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... wickedness of a bad king. We have recorded the hours spent with Hannah More; the happy days passed with, and the years invigorated by, the advice and influence of Maria Edgworth. We might recall the stern and faithful puritanism of Maria Jane Jewsbury, and the Old World devotion of the true and high-souled daughter of Israel—Grace Aguilar. The mellow tones of Felicia Hemans' poetry lingers still among all who appreciate the holy sympathies of religion and virtue. We could dwell long and profitably ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... symbolical of their role; while other more malevolent spirits can only be driven away by shouting, buffeting and drumming, such as characterize the Mohurrum season in Bombay. The Indian element of nervous excitement might in course of ages have been sobered by the puritanism of Islam but for the presence of the African, who unites with a firm belief in spirits a phenomenal desire for noise and brawling; and it is the union of this jovial African element with the sentimentality of Persia and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... it's the youth of my sires that I find so strange in Barker. Only, theoretically, there's no Puritanism. He's a thorough believer in Sewell. I suspect he could formulate Sewell's theology a great deal better than ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... me effusively. He offered me at once an engagement. I told him that I was not 'Alcide.' He only laughed. He had seen the announcement of your marriage in the papers, and he imagined that I simply wanted to remain unknown because of your husband's puritanism. I sang to him, and he was satisfied. I did not appear, I have never announced myself as 'Alcide.' It was the Press who forced ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that we have here reached the extreme limits of fanaticism, but in reality there were men whom even the Pharisaical Puritanism of the Philipists did not satisfy. These new zealots, who appeared in the time of Catherine II., but first became known to the official world in the reign of Nicholas I., rebuked the lukewarmness of their brethren, and founded a new sect in order ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... elsewhere have no doubt achieved similar results by other means, though we have never come across an example equally remarkable. The goal can be reached, presumably, by the road of saintliness. It might be reached, though it is doubtful, by the road of Puritanism and "efficiency," the appeal to abstinence and "living hard." It cannot be reached, that is certain, by merely disciplinary methods and the appeal to fear, for the commonest form of schoolboy vice is such that, even allowing for the casualness of boys, it will not be detected ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... matter by way of episode, after the approved recipe of Homer and Vergil? Has it allegorical characters, contrary to the practice of the ancients? Does the poet intrude personally into his poem, thus mixing the lyric and epic styles? etc. Not a word as to Milton's puritanism, or his Weltanschauung, or the relation of his work to its environment. Nothing of that historical and sympathetic method—that endeavor to put the reader at the poet's point of view—by which modern critics, from Lessing to Sainte-Beuve, have revolutionized their ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... on subjects the bookman is very catholic, and has an orthodox horror of all sects. He does not require Mr. Froude's delightful apology to win the Pilgrim's Progress a place on his shelf, because, although the bookman may be far removed from Puritanism, yet he knows that Bunyan had the secret of English style, and although he may be as far from Romanism, yet he must needs have his A'Kempis (especially in Pickering's edition of 1828), and when ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat similar to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war, the majority of the nation with them. Besides, the English temperament was more adapted to Puritanism than the Italian, nor were the manifestations of piety prescribed by Parliament so extravagant. And yet even in England a reaction took ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... asceticism, puritanism, sabbatarianism^; cynicism^, austerity; total abstinence; nephalism^. mortification, maceration, sackcloth and ashes, flagellation; penance &c 952; fasting &c 956; martyrdom. ascetic; anchoret^, anchorite; martyr; Heautontimorumenos^; hermit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no corresponding gain that is, and that awful and terrible disease which devastated England some centuries ago, and from which by heredity of spirit we suffer now, Puritanism. That was a dreadful plague, the brutes held and taught that joy and laughter and merriment were evil: it was a doctrine the most profane and wicked. Why, what is the commonest crime one sees? A sullen face. That is the truth of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... term "Il vizio Inglese." It would be invicious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr. Gaspar,[FN421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... ourselves being perfectly at peace. The federalist chieftains were too proud, ignoring too much the common voter. They often expressed doubt, too, as to the permanence of popular institutions. Federalism had too close affinity with Puritanism to suit many outside New England. And then—deadly to the party even had nothing else concurred—there was a quarrel among its leaders. Hamilton, the Essex Junto (Pickering, Cabot, Quincy, Otis), and their supporters were set against Adams and his friends. This rivalry of long standing was brought ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... been given to her before she was born. There had nearly always been a girl called Charity in the Coe family. They had brought the name with them from New England when they settled in Westchester County some two hundred years before. They had kept little of their Puritanism except a few of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... with eight. And the law knew of no distinction between wagon and post- chaise, coach-horse or cart-horse. However, we could not compass this point of the eight horses, the double quadriga, in one single instance; but the true reason we surmised to be, not the pretended puritanism of loyalty to the house of Guelph, but the running short of the innkeeper's funds. If he had to meet a daily average call for twenty-four horses, then it might well happen that our draft upon him for eight horses at one pull would bankrupt him for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... of radical antagonism, making it seem dangerous to us to let such opposites to ourselves have speech and utterance. Certainly the Jew,—the Jew of ancient times, at least,—then seemed a thousand degrees nearer than the Celt to us. Puritanism had so assimilated Bible ideas and phraseology; names like Ebenezer, and notions like that of hewing Agag in pieces, came so natural to us, that the sense of affinity between the Teutonic and the Hebrew nature was quite ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... Prayers of the Liturgy continued to be read or intoned. The old familiar bells, Catholic as they were in all the emotions which they suggested, called the congregation together with their musical peal, though in the midst of triumphant Puritanism. The 'Book of Sports,' which, under an order from Charles I., had been read regularly in Church, had in 1644 been laid under a ban; but the gloom of a Presbyterian Sunday was, is, and for ever will ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... life was broken, however, on week days. Southern Puritanism differed from the early New England Puritanism in a certain affectionateness and sociability. The mother could play well on the piano, and frequently sang with the children hymns and popular melodies. Between the two brothers there was from the first the most beautiful ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... realism of research; and the author has made no great point of causing his figures to speak the English of their period. Nevertheless, the book is full of the moral presence of the race that invented Hester's penance—diluted and complicated with other things, but still perfectly recognisable. Puritanism, in a word, is there, not only objectively, as Hawthorne tried to place it there, but subjectively as well. Not, I mean, in his judgment of his characters, in any harshness of prejudice, or in the obtrusion of a moral lesson; but in the very quality of his own vision, in the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... who had died to put an end to all that!' Cromwell's inauguration was by the sword and Bible; what we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and Bible were borne before him, without any chimera. Were not these real emblems of Puritanism; its true decoration and insignia? It had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended to stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon mistook; he believed too much in the dupeability of men; saw no fact deeper in man than hunger and this. He was mistaken. Like a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... ethics, is the revived and reinforced Sklavenmoral that besets all of us of English speech—the huggermugger morality of timorous, whining, unintelligent and unimaginative men—envy turned into law, cowardice sanctified, stupidity made noble, Puritanism. And in the theoretical field there is an even more luxuriant crop of bosh. Mountebanks almost innumerable tell us what we should believe and practice, in politics, religion, philosophy and the arts. England and the United States, between them, house more creeds than all the rest of the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... she'd outgrown Puritanism," he returned, "but really she was, in her way, as much of a Puritan as you are. The country is full of people who don't understand that the essence of Puritanism is a slavish adherence to what they call principle, and who think because they have got rid of a certain ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... family distinctions. In so far as it was conscious, it was defiantly independent of genealogy. Had the Mesuriers possessed a coat-of-arms, James Mesurier would probably have kept it locked up as a frivolity to be ashamed of, for it was a part of his Puritanism that such earthly distinctions were foolishness with God; but, as a matter of fact, between Adam and the immediate great-grandparents of the young Mesuriers, there was a void which the Herald's office would have found a difficulty in filling. This it ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... until well into the nineteenth century. The last of the quadrivial subjects, Music, experienced a different history in different countries. In the Germanic countries it continued to receive its old emphasis, while in England and France much less was made of it. After the setting-in of Puritanism in England, when music was regarded with great disfavor, it in large part passed out of the English curriculum. As a result the Germanic and Scandinavian nations are to-day singing nations, while the English and American are not. In early America, in particular, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... re-opening of the theaters, and for fourteen years Dryden was known as a dramatic poet. There is little need to tell you anything about his plays, for you would not like to read them. During the reign of Puritanism in England the people had been forbidden even innocent pleasures. The Maypole dances had been banished, games and laughter were frowned upon. Now that these too stern laws had been taken away, people plunged madly into pleasure: ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... it. Her bringing up between a brilliant drawing-room and a well-stocked library had preserved her from the two dangers to which English girls of the free-born class are mainly exposed: she escaped Puritanism, yet was equally withheld from frivolous worldliness. But it was well that this balance, admirably maintained thus far, should not be submitted to the risks of such a life as awaited her, if there had come no change of conditions. She would be a beautiful woman, and was not unaware ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... the vice of hypocrisy? The accusation, of course, dates from the time of the Round- heads; before that, nothing in the national character could have suggested it. The England of Chaucer, the England of Shakespeare, assuredly was not hypocrite. The change wrought by Puritanism introduced into the life of the people that new element which ever since, more or less notably, has suggested to the observer a habit of double-dealing in morality and religion. The scorn of the Cavalier is easily understood; it created a traditional Cromwell, who, till ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... was thin and scattered, the mode of living primitive in the extreme, and the visit of a stranger, so insignificant as myself, quite enough to make a great sensation in these secluded parts. I found the ministers ingenuous, free from all puritanism, and generally well informed.... The examination of the parish books was also a labour of love and source of endless amusement. They mostly went as far back as a century and a half, and were, in the elder times, filled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... poem that is as moral in one sense as it is lascivious in another. As Mr. Gosse says, "his imagination was always swinging, like a pendulum, between the North and the South, between Paganism and Puritanism, between resignation to the insticts and an ascetic repudiation of their authority." It is the conflict between the two moods that is the most interesting feature in Swinburne's verse, apart from its purely artistic qualities. Some writers find Swinburne as great a magician as ever ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... to his ancestor the colonel, that intimate relationship between the present and the past in the way of ancestry and descent, which historians so carefully overlook." Here, as in "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne is unsparing in his analysis of the meaning of early American Puritanism—its ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... nunnery," as it was called, where the venerable Mr. Ferran, a friend of George Herbert's, was greatly taken by Inglesant's accomplishments and grace of manner. Various forms of extremely High Church yet Protestant worship were celebrated here each day with great devotion, until he became disgusted with Puritanism and craved to participate in the office of mass. At this point, however, he met Mr. Hobbes, whose rude but forcible condemnation of papacy restrained him from casting his lot with it. At seventeen, he saw one night a real apparition of the just executed Strafford. The last act ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... planted the first seeds of aesthetic appreciation in the raw West where the repertoire had previously been limited to Money Musk, The Arkansas Traveler, and Old Dog Tray. The liberal tendencies of German thought mellowed the austere Puritanism of the prevalent theology. The respect which these people had for intellectual attainments potently influenced the educational system of America from the kindergarten to the newly founded state universities. Their political convictions led them to espouse with ardor the cause of the Union ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... us until it has been solved rightly; illustrative instruction cannot be such a solution. We must see with open eyes where we are standing. The American nation of to-day is no longer the America of yesterday. The puritanism which certainly was a spirit of restraint has gone and cannot be brought back. The new wealth and power, the influx of sensuous South European and East European elements, the general trend of our age all over the civilized world, with its technical comfort and its inexpensive luxuries, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... and at an era of English society when the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest. In reality, there was at this period a collision of forces acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers in its equipage. Puritanism frowned upon these pursuits, as ruinous to public morals; on the other hand, loyalty could not but tolerate what was patronized by the sovereign; and it happened that Elizabeth, James, and Charles I., were all alike lovers and promoters of theatrical amusements, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... poet or philosopher, moralist or founder of a religion, his sexual doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for pleasure, excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for contemplative tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great Philistine world. The world shown us in books, whether the books be confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in political orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... its expansion, the foundation and growth of its colonial empire. While to a sixth, its religious history is the one that claims most attention, and the struggles with Rome, the rise and decay of Puritanism, and the development of modern thought will fill his pages. Each of these six will select just those facts, and those facts only, that are relevant to his subject. The introduction of irrelevant facts would be felt ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... literally resolves itself into a question of wind and water. The tones of the instrument are good, and they are very fairly brought out by the present organist. The services are well got through, and whilst Puritanism is on the one hand avoided in them, Ritualism is on the other distinctly discarded. A medium course, which is the best, is observed in the church, and so long as Mr. Firth remains at the place there will be nothing bedizened or foolish in its ceremonies. A small memorial ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As "the Puritan has triumphed" in this stern contest, so must the Puritan triumph in the more graceful emulations that are to come; but it must be the Puritanism of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding spirit of the seventeenth century by which we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... Puritan. Bunyan, a poor tinker and lay preacher, reflects the tremendous spiritual ferment among the common people. And Dryden, the cool, calculating author who made a business of writing, regards the Renaissance and Puritanism as both things of the past. He lives in the present, aims to give readers what they like, follows the French critics of the period who advocate writing by rule, and popularizes that cold, formal, precise style which, under the assumed name of classicism, is to dominate ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... cannot be convincingly effected. Wrongly or rightly, a theatrical audience, like the spectators of a trial, demand a definite verdict and sentence, and no play can satisfy which does not reasonably meet this demand. And this arises not from any merely Christian prudery or Puritanism, for it is as true for Greek tragedy and other ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... hardly be debated: certainly it was not so secured; whether or not the Quakers could have been without George Fox, certainly they did not occur without him. Take the second: whether or not some other movement could have done what Puritanism did is hardly a question for history; Puritanism actually did the work for England and America which gave both their strongest qualities. There is no testing the period to see whether Puritanism could ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... the poets than of the warriors and the men of facts and figures. The New England poets derived their nourishment from the deep earth of that wholesome past, into which the roots of all our lives go down. The mystical and mediaeval side of Puritanism finds its embodiment in Hawthorne; its moral ideals shine in Bryant; its independency is incarnated in Emerson. Emerson is the type of the nineteenth-century Puritan, in life pure, in temperament saintly, in spirit detached ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... begins." Perhaps the lately-revived principles would prevail in the Anglican Church; perhaps they would be lost in some miserable schism, or some more miserable compromise; but there was nothing rash in venturing to predict that "neither Puritanism nor Liberalism had any permanent inheritance ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Ultimately, however, they became even more rigidly attached to the Law of Moses than the Jews themselves. Anxious to be recognized as Israelites, they set their hearts on joining the Two Tribes, on their return from captivity, but the stern Puritanism of Ezra and Nehemiah admitted no alliance between the pure blood of Jerusalem and the tainted race of the north. Resentment at this affront was natural, and excited resentment in return, till, in Christ's day, centuries of strife and mutual injury, intensified by ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... only be fine and true in conduct by giving up all lovely things and wearing hair-shirts. What an outgrown, mediaeval idea! How could she have been for a moment under its domination! It was just that old Puritanism, Spartanism of her childhood, which was continually reaching up its bony hand from the grave where she ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... in the privileges of his righteousness. In the son, individualist by temperament, once the science of colleges had replaced thoroughly the faith of conventicles, this moral attitude translated itself into a frenzied puritanism of ambition. He nursed it as something secularly holy. To see it thwarted opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, whose morality was artificial, corrupt, and blasphemous. The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... of sober dimities! Poor little plump partridges, they cannot help their forced puritanism.—But all women are for king and ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... interested all London not so very long ago. When I remember the life you acknowledged you had lived, the life you were quite defiant about, I can't help being amused by this sudden access of conventional Puritanism. You declared then that you didn't choose to live a dull, orthodox life. One would suppose that the leopard could change ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... is probable, from the persons with whom he was connected, that he would not be indifferent to the debates around him, and that his religious prepossessions were then, as afterwards, in favour of the conforming puritanism in the Church, as opposed to the extreme and thorough-going puritanism of Cartwright. Of the conforming puritans, who would have been glad of a greater approximation to the Swiss model, but who, whatever their private wishes or ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... dramatic incident! During that first stay of mine at Washington I made the acquaintance of three of the greatest men in the United States—Calhoun, Webster, and Clay—Calhoun of Carolina, the impassioned Southerner; Webster, the eloquent representative of New England Puritanism; and Clay of Kentucky, with his angular face and powerful frame, and a curious mixture of extreme gentleness and energy in his manner and ways—the very type of the Western population, the advance-guard of civilization. I was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... sound moral and vivifies the right principle for the youth to whom the dawning consciousness of morality is the first real psychological discovery of life. With hearty laughter at the stupid irritations of self-conscious virtue, with ironic scorn for the frigid Puritanism of mechanical morality, Mark Twain enraptures that innumerable company of the sophisticated who have chafed under the omnipresent influence of a "good example" and stilled the painless pangs of an unruly conscience. With splendid satire for ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... leading their horses, and mount from a horse-block at the foot of the hill. The second Roxbury church was set on a high hill, and the story is fairly pathetic of the aged and feeble John Eliot, the glory of New England Puritanism, that once, as he toiled patiently up the long ascent to his dearly loved meeting, he said to the person on whose supporting arm he leaned (in the Puritan fashion of teaching a lesson from any event and surrounding): "This is very like the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... interpret him, worshippers seem to be in the immediate presence of the awful and invisible Power which rules the universe; and without condescending to blind themselves by delusive symbols and images and incense and priestly magic, stand face to face with the inscrutable mystery. The old Puritanism comes out in a new form. The Calvinist creed, he says in 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' was the 'grain on which the bravest, hardiest, and most vigorous race of men that ever trod the earth were nourished.' That creed, stripped of its scholastic formulas, was sufficient nourishment ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... seriously, than did Italy. And in both the new movement eventually assumed the character of intellectual asceticism moulded by the sombre hand of religious fanaticism; for Spain was the cradle of the Counter-Reformation, England of Puritanism. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... tyranny, and moreover that his writings were full of splendid aphorisms, inspiring thoughts, generous ideals. But he had formalised Christianity for all that; he had linked it closely to the Judaic system; he was ultimately responsible for Puritanism; that is to say, it was his influence more than any other that had given the Jewish scriptures their weight in the Christian scheme. It seemed to Hugh to be a terrible calamity that had reserved, so to speak, a place in the chariot of Christ for the Jewish dispensation; it was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... were driven away by the Test Act in 1704, and in 1732. On the failure to repeal that act the protestant emigration recommenced which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of English interests and peopled America with fresh blood of Puritanism. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... See, all the way down the street—silks, garments, ruffles, laces. A saturnalia of masks. It's the only art we've developed in America—over-dressing. Clothes are peculiarly American—a sort of underhanded female revenge against the degenerate puritanism of the nation. I've seen them even at revival meetings clothed in the seven tailored sins and denouncing the devil with their bustles. Only they don't wear bustles any more. But what's an anachronism ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... as they deservedly styled themselves, the Pilgrims, belonged to that English sect the austerity of whose principles had acquired for them the name of Puritans. Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the Government of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... appreciation of the great Protector, all histories of the man and his times having been hitherto written from the point of view either of the Royalists or of the revolutionary Whigs. To neither of these was an understanding of Puritanism at all possible. Moreover, to the Cavaliers, Cromwell was a regicide; to the Whigs he was a military usurper who dissolved parliaments. To both he was a Puritan who applied Biblical phraseology to practical affairs—therefore, a canting hypocrite, though undoubtedly a man of great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... sangfroid. The sarong, as worn by the slender and graceful Malay, appears a modest and appropriate garb, but the grotesque effect of native attire on the broad-built Dutchwoman affords conclusive proof that neither personal vanity nor a sense of humour pertain to her stolid personality. Dutch Puritanism certainly undergoes startling transformations under the tropical skies, and the Netherlands India produces a modification of European ideas concerning what have been called "the minor moralities of life," unequalled in colonial experience. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... in Massachusetts. The early Biblical codes of Massachusetts confined slavery to "lawfull Captives taken in iust warres, & such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us."[16] The stern Puritanism of early days endeavored to carry this out literally, and consequently when a certain Captain Smith, about 1640, attacked an African village and brought some of the unoffending natives home, he was promptly arrested. Eventually, the General ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... given a strong impetus to progress in religious, educational, and political affairs. As regards the first of these matters, it must be remembered that the sort of intolerance with which he has had to contend more resembles that of eighteenth-century New England puritanism than anything we are familiar with in our own time. As for the second matter, all of his work may in a sense be called educational, while such a book as 'Det Flager' shows how closely he has considered the subject of education in its special and even technical aspects. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various



Words linked to "Puritanism" :   church service, sternness, puritanical, church, strictness, England, Protestantism



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