Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
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The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
Joseph Wood KrutchPuritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.
Sir Stephen Harold SpenderPuritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
h. l. mencken[Puritanism is] the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
james russell lowellWhat in Calvin had been a qualified concession to practical exigencies appeared in some of his later followers as a frank idealization of the life of the trader, as the service of God and the training-ground of the soul. Discarding the suspicion of economic motives, which had been as characteristic of the reformers as of medieval theologians, Puritanism in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification to the appeal of economic expediency, and offered a moral creed, in which the duties of religion and the calls of business ended their long estrangement in an unanticipated reconciliation.
r. h. tawney