Puritanical Quotes

“The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga.”
― Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

“The falseness of your own hearts, if you look not to them, may undo you(15).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Remember with whom thou hast to do: what canst thou expect from dust but levity; or from corruption, but defilement(33)?”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“So then, let "Deserved" be written on the door of hell, but on the door of Heaven and life, "The free gift" (68).”
― Richard Baxter

“We will "live eternally with Peter, Paul, Austin, Chrysostom, Jerome, Wickliffe, Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Beza, Bullinger. . . Latimer(69) [.]”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“[I]f thou loiter when thou shouldst labour, thou wilt lose the crown. O fall to work then speedily and seriously, and bless God that thou hast yet time to do it; and though that which is past cannot be recalled, yet redeem the time now by doubling thy diligence (260).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“In the West, we've gone from living in holier-than-thou societies to more-liberal-than-thou ones. Call it secular piety but both are just different forms of the same sanctimoniousness.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The true knowing, living Christian complains more frequently and more bitterly of the wants and woes within him, than without him(55).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“The way of painful duty is the way of fullest comfort. Christ carrieth all our comforts in his hand : if we are out of that way where Christ is to be met, we are out of the way where comfort is to be had (312).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“I wonder why bigots think their conservative and puritanical version of 'God' made the male body with a prostate gland that also co-incidentally 'just happens' to be a 'g-spot'?”
― Christina Engela, Blachart: Galaxii Series Book 1

“If we did not feel the bitterness of his anger, we would not so sweetly relish His love.”
― Timothy Rogers, Trouble of Mind and the Disease of Melancholy: Written for the Use of Such As Are or Have Been Exercised by the Same

“O let us not be as the purblind world, that cannot see afar off ; let us never look at the grave, but let us see the resurrection beyond it(42).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“[O]ur applications are quicker about our sufferings, than our sins(77)[.]”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Do you think none shall be saved but puritans(89)?”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Oh! what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided conscience(93)!”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“As all our senses are the inlets of sin, so they are become the inlets of sorrow (99).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Sinner, I would be loth to have thy soul destroyed by wilful self-delusion. . . . So consequently, there is a despair which is a grievous sin; and there is a despair which is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. I would not have thee despair of the sufficiency of the blood of Christ to save thee, if thou believe, and heartily obey him; nor of the willingness of God to pardon and save thee, if thou be such a one; nor yet absolutely of thy own salvation; because, while there is life and time, there is some hope of thy conversion, and so of thy salvation. . . . Never stick at the sadness of the conclusion, man, but acknowledge plainly, If I die before I get out of this estate, I am lost forever. It is as good deal truly with thyself as not; God will not flatter thee, he will deal plainly whether thou do or not. The very truth is, this kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven(233).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“[O]ne duty may be said to be too long, when its shuts out another, and then it ceaseth, indeed, to be a duty(274).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Seriousness is the very thing wherein consisteth our sincerity. If thou art not serious, thou art not a Christian (279).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“What if you had once seen hell open, and all the damned there in their easeless torments, and had heard them crying out of their slothfulness in the day of their visitation, and wishing that they had but another life to live, and that God would but try them once again; one crying out of this neglect of duty, and another of his loitering and trifling, when he should have been labouring for his life; what manner of person would you have been after such a sight as this ? (284)”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“What if you had seen haven open as Stephen did, and all the saints there triumphing in glory, and enjoying the end of their labours and sufferings, what a life would you lead after such a sight as this! Why, you will see this with your eyes before it be long.

Thou hast the more cause to doubt a great deal, because thou never didst doubtl and yet more because thou hast been so careless in thy confidence. What do these expressions discover, but a wilful neglect of thy own salvation? As a shipmaster that should let his vessel alone, and mind other matters, and say, I will venture it among the rocks, and sands, and gulfs, and waves, and winds; I will never touble myself to know wheter it shall come safe to the harbour; I will trust God with it; it will speed as well as other men's vessels do. Indeed, as well as other men's that are as careless and idle, but not so well as other mens's that are diligent and watchful. What horrible abuse of God is this, for men to pretend that they trust God with their souls only to cloak their own wilful negligence! (290-291)”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“[T]his is the strongest encouragement to them in sinning; and we have need to lay all our batteries against this bulwark of presumption (361).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“Even innocent Adam is liker to forget God in a paradise, than Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dunghill(376)[.]”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“O sirs, how many souls, then, have every one of us been guilty of damning! What a number of our neighbours and acquaintance are dead, in whom we discerned no signs of sanctification, and never did once plainly tell them of it, or how to be recovered! If you had been the cause but of burning a man's house through your negligence, or of undoing him in the world, or of destroying his body, how would it trouble you as long as you lived! If you had but killed a man unadvisedly, it would much disquiet you. We have known those that have been guilty of murder, that could never sleep quietly after, nor have one comfortable day, their own consciences did so vex and torment them. O, then, what a heart mayst thou have, that hast been builty of murdering such a multitude of precious souls! Remember this when thou lookest thy friend or carnal neighbour in the face, and think with thyself, Can I find in my heart, through my silence and negligence, to be guilty of his everlasting burning in hell? Methinks such a thought should even untie the tongue of the dumb. . . . [H]e that is guilty of a man's continuing unregenerate, is also guilty of the sins of his unregeneracy. . . . Eli did not commit the sin himself, and yet he speaketh so coldly against it that he also must bear the punishment . Guns and cannons spake against sin in England, because the inhabitants would not speak. God pleadeth with us with fire and sword, because we would not plead with sinners with our tongues (410-11).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“He that dare not die, dare scarce fight valiantly (475).”
― Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

“The puritanical conscience is the coldest and cruelest of all the self-flagellating consciences to bear, for it stamps the sweet abandon out of life entirely. .... The puritanical conscience, with its little grey bonnet tied under its chin....”
― Kay Boyle, Being geniuses together, 1920-1930

“In all other evils people take for granted what others say, and sympathize accordingly with them; but in this one people are apt to contradict and oppose those who are distressed—and as long as they do so, they cannot pity them as they ought. This makes the grief of such to overwhelm and strangle them within, because, when they disclose it, they find it is to no purpose. In this case, do as you would have others do unto you. Suppose that you have a toothache or a headache, and, when you complain of those ailments, people were to tell you that it was nothing but a fancy; would you not think their carriage to be full of cruelty? And would it not vex you to find out that you cannot be believed?”
― Timothy Rogers, Trouble of Mind and the Disease of Melancholy: Written for the Use of Such As Are or Have Been Exercised by the Same

“I grew up in the UK but come from a culturally conservative, religious, and ethnic minority background – simply stating out loud that I enjoy sex is still taboo.
Astride two cultures, I have had no choice but to challenge the contradictions placed in front of me most of my life. In that context, this book is my act of rebellion. It lays to rest the suffocating expectations placed on me around marriage, motherhood and the supposed passivity of female sexuality.”
― Donna Mitra, Hard On Us: Memoir Of A Sexless Marriage

“Puritanism brings nothing but mindlessness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans