Quotes about puritans

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The puritan through life's sweet garden goes to pluck the thorn and cast away the rose.

— Kenneth Hare

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man -- that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. 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

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

— H. L. Mencken

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

— Wendell Phillips