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Puritan   /pjˈʊrətən/   Listen
Puritan

noun
1.
A member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought that the Protestant Reformation under Elizabeth was incomplete and advocated the simplification and regulation of forms of worship.
2.
Someone who adheres to strict religious principles; someone opposed to sensual pleasures.
3.
A person excessively concerned about propriety and decorum.  Synonym: prude.



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"Puritan" Quotes from Famous Books



... The staunch Puritan Phillip Stubbes, in the second part of his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), thus rails at the beards and the barbers ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... predictable, not accidental. It is possible to have them appear more frequently; and in addition, to raise the level of the whole race, making the entire nation happier and more useful. These are the great tasks of eugenics. America needs more families like that old Puritan strain which is one of the familiar examples ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... send you his letter to myself, as a slight emblem and memorial of the peaceable, affectionate, and ultra modest man, and his innocent far niente life,—and the connexion (were there nothing more) of Omar, the Mahometan Blackguard, and Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan!—discharging you completely, at the same time, from ever returning me this letter, or taking any notice of it, except ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... greed when displayed in its ordinary course. But because Cicero's honesty was abnormal, we are first surprised, and then, suspecting little deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in the midst of Roman profligacy he was not altogether a Puritan in his money matters. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... yourself, wife,' said her husband presently. 'Young men must have a turn at being fools, once in a way. It is not much in Pitt's way; but, however, it seems his turn has come. There are worse types of the disorder. I would rather have this Puritan scruple to deal with than some other things. The religious craze passes off easier than a fancy for drinking or gambling; it is hot while it lasts, but it is ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... on October 17th, 1792, came of an old Puritan family, long identified with the woolen trade. "In the early days," he tells us, "the Exeter merchants were mostly traveled men with a practical knowledge of other tongues, and the quay at Exeter was crowded with the ships of all nations." Thus his imagination was kindled ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... long, grim-faced silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on me one of them sidled forward ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... entertainment, and he was engaged in hunting-parties, in which he greatly delighted. Leicester loaded him with presents; the earl of Pembroke also complimented him with a valuable jewel. The earl of Huntingdon, a nobleman whose religious zeal, which had rendered him the peculiar patron of the puritan divines, interested him also in the cause of Holland, escorted him on his return as far as Gravesend; and sir Henry Sidney attended him to Dover. The queen willingly bestowed on her princely guest the cheap distinction of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... number is two thirds, and even three quarters. There are more Cohens than Smiths in the New York directory. Two thirds of the laborers in our factories are foreign-born or of foreign parentage. New England is no longer Puritan but foreign. So is it in the Middle and the Central West, and not only in city and town but hamlet and valley. The farms sanctified by many a Puritan prayer are occupied to-day by French-Canadian and Italian ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... all the gloomy and unfavourable thoughts which had for some time overclouded his fancy. In those features, so simply sweet, he could trace no alliance with the pinched visage of the peak-bearded, black-capped Puritan, or his starched, withered spouse, with the craft expressed in the Lord Keeper's countenance, or the haughtiness which predominated in that of his lady; and, while he gazed on Lucy Ashton, she seemed to be an angel descended on earth, unallied to the coarses mortals among whom she deigned to dwell ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... whose age and infirmity had prevented him from joining Washington, and whose courtesy and intelligence had made him respected by his foes, acted as chorus: "These I take to be the Puritan governors of Massachusetts: Endicott, Winthrop, Vane, Dudley, Haynes, Bellingham, Leverett, Bradstreet." Then came a rude soldier, mailed, begirt with arms: the tyrant Andros; a brown-faced man with a sailor's gait: Sir William Phipps; a courtier wigged and jewelled: Earl Bellomont; ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... more regular champions the orthodox party of Greece and Asia Minor had a few very eccentric allies. One was Acesius, the Novatian, "the Puritan," summoned by Constantine from Byzantium with Alexander, from the deep respect entertained by the Emperor for his ascetic character. He was attended by a boy, Auxanon, who lived to a great age afterward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... of Cimicifugas, and no other. Hilda was presented first, while I tried to fire my courage by thinking of the Puritan Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, and the Boston Tea-Party, and the battle of Bunker Hill. Then my turn came. I murmured some words which might have been anything, and curtsied in a stiff-necked self-respecting sort of way. Then we talked,—at least the duke and Lady Veratrum ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat; but the brim of the lad's hat was looped up on one side by a rosette of silver lace, his shoe-buckles were of massive silver, his neckcloth was of silk, and his coat of fine cloth, betokening that he was of the rank of a gentleman, and that, if a Puritan, he had taken no small pains to set his person off to the ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... imagination by anything much more exciting, especially by accounts of things that never happened, and were consequently untruthful. Her extreme horror of fiction was a form of bigotry now almost extinct, but she had grown up in it and retained it in all the old Puritan vigour. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... Pope, who knew that the course he took would not commit him as Pope—and not of the body which calls itself the Church. Let the dirty proceeding have its right name. The Jesuit Riccioli,[158] the stoutest and most learned Anti-Copernican in Europe, and the Puritan Wilkins, a strong Copernican and Pope-hater, are equally positive that the Roman Church never pronounced any decision: and this in the time immediately following the ridiculous proceeding of the Inquisition. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... covered with electrical and chemical formulae, not notes. I've seen them. Lenyard, let's go back to Paris and dine, like sensible men,—which we are not." Scheff dragged his friend out of the house, for the other was in a stupor. Neshevna's words cleaved his very soul. The American, the puritan in him, swiftly rose to her eloquent exhortation. All life was corrupt, he had been taught; art was corrupt, a snare, a delusion. Yet—was all its appalling power, its sensuous grandeur to be wasted in the service of the world, the flesh, the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... for the free exercise of her great talent she is driven to such as this! For song must have audience, however unfit! There was Orpheus with his! Genius was always eccentric! If he could but be her protection against that political father, that Puritan mother, and that idiotic brother of hers, and put an end to this sort of thing before it came to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... great extent, as everybody knows, American colonization proceeded through the formation of religious communities. Such were the Pilgrim and the Puritan commonwealths. Such were the Quaker groups of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Such were the localized societies of the Dunkards, the Moravians, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... marriage was arranged to take place after he should have done so. In the meantime he found himself working side by side with William Reeve, Prophet John Reeve's brother, at this time a "very zealous Puritan," with whom he talked of his prospects. "I loved the maid, and desired to be rich," he tells us; but these Puritan people were horrified at his deliberately intending to live the life of a usurer, and they "threatened great judgments, and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... and it was a matter of constant amazement with one who had known less austere climates, to behold how vegetable life struggled with the hostile skies, and, in an atmosphere as chill and damp as that of a cellar, shot forth the buds and blossoms upon the pear trees, called out the sour Puritan courage of the currant-bushes, taught a reckless native grapevine to wander and wanton over the southern side of the fence, and decked the banks with violets as fearless and as fragile as New England girls, so that about the end of June, when the heavens relented and the sun ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... cities are growing in a ratio totally disproportionate to the growth of population; and this, not in the New World simply, but in the Old. London has nearly as many citizens as England had in the time of the Puritan Revolution. Men are nucleating in a fashion foreboding, but certain. A symptom of the city life is, that he who is city bred knows no life apart from his city. He belongs to it as essentially as the Venetian belonged to Venice. The community is a veritable part ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... did. The town wanted waterworks; Daniel Sands knew how to build 'em—eh? The people couldn't build 'em themselves, could they?" asked the Captain triumphantly. Brotherton laughed; Morty Sands grinned,—and, shame be to Amos Adams, the rugged Puritan, who had opposed the bonds in his paper so boldly, he only shook a sorrowful head and lifted no voice in protest. Such is the weakness of our thunderers without their lightning! Brotherton, who still seemed uneasy, went on: "Say, men, didn't that franchise call for a system of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... a very fierce passage; but Arius was banished, not burned; and it is only fair to myself to say that neither at this, nor any other time of my life, not even when I was fiercest, could I have even cut off a Puritan's ears, and I think the sight of a Spanish auto-da-fe would have been the death of me. Again, when one of my friends, of liberal and evangelical opinions, wrote to expostulate with me on the course I was taking, I said that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... of Roman supremacy had possessed such resources for conquering and colonizing new lands. By the middle of the seventeenth century Spain had ceased to be a dangerous rival; Germany and Italy were at the time little more than geographical expressions, while England was in the throes of the Puritan Revolution. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... art has varied greatly among different peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to admit any devices of human skill into the direct relations between God and man, whether it be in the beauty of church or temple, in the ritual of their service, or in the images which they enshrine. Other religions, such as ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... but that he was accustomed to a certain frank female admiration; but then it was of the coulisse, and not of the cloister, with which he always persisted in associating Mrs. Decker. To be addressed in this way by an invalid Puritan, a sick saint with the austerity of suffering still clothing her, a woman who had a Bible on the dressing-table, who went to church three times a day, and was devoted to her husband, completely bowled him over. He still held her hands as she ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... raised and domed to match the "Chinese room," at the expense of some small rooms on the upper floor; and the windows and doors had been suited to eighteenth-century taste. But the old books in the old latticed shelves which the Puritan founder of the family had bought in the days of the Long Parliament were still there; so were the chairs in which that worthy had sat to read a tract of Milton's or of Baxter's, or the table at which he had penned his letters to Hampden or Fairfax, or to his old friend—on the wrong ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... on the mossy headstones. The oldest marked grave is that of Governor Bradford. It is an obelisk a little more than eight feet in height. On the north side is a Hebrew sentence said to signify, Jehovah is our help. Under this stone rests the ashes of William Bradford, a zealous Puritan and sincere Christian; Governor of Plymouth Colony from April, 1621, to 1657 (the year he died, aged 69), except five years which he declined. "Qua patres difficillime adepti sunt, nolite turpiter relinquare." Which means, What our fathers ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... texts we note that the work of men was done on the sixth day, but the women must work as usual on the seventh. We see the same thing to-day, woman's work is never done. What irony to say to them rest on the seventh day. The Puritan fathers would not let the children romp or play, nor give their wives a drive on Sunday, but they enjoyed a better dinner on the Sabbath than any other day; yet the xxxi chapter and 15th ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of speaking the last sentence would have amused a dispassionate critic, it was so distinctively the tone of Puritan maidenhood. From lips like Adela's it is delicious to hear such moral babbling. Oh, the gravity of conviction in a white-souled English girl of eighteen! Do you not hear her say those words: 'things that ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... simple disciples of Bacon, deal with facts and with history as 'the will of God revealed in facts.' We will leave those who choose to settle what ought to be, and ourselves look patiently at that which actually was once, and which may be again; that so out of the conduct of our old Puritan forefathers (right or wrong), and their long war against 'Art,' we may learn a wholesome lesson; as we doubtless shall, if we believe firmly that our history is neither more nor less than what the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... 1662, and met with extraordinary success. Its wit, its quaint sense and learning, its passages of sarcastic reflection on all manner of topics, and above all, its unsparing ridicule of men and things on the Puritan side, combined to render it a general favorite. The reception of Part II., which appeared a year subsequent, was equally flattering. Yet its author seems to have fallen into the greatest poverty and obscurity, from which be never was enabled to emerge. It appears ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... England, to dance or to attend the theater is considered almost morally wrong. It was just so in the days of Laud. He wished to encourage amusements among the people, particularly on Sunday, after church. This was partly for the purpose of counteracting the efforts of those who were inclined to Puritan views. They attached great importance to their sermons and lectures, for in them they could address and influence the people. But by means of these addresses, as Laud thought, they put ideas of insubordination into the minds of the people, and ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Williams, driven away from New England by the violence of Hugh Peters, they came here, and called the region Viedeland or Land of Peace—a beautiful name for the region of those seeking rest of conscience from wicked and violent men. But even here the Puritan did not find the desired quiet and safety; for several of his band perished in the Indian massacre that sorely visited New Netherland on the 6th ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... It appeared it was past midnight, that I had slept about sixteen hours, and that Flora had returned her poultry to the shed and I had heard her not. I could not but wonder if she had stooped to look at me as I slept. The puritan hens now slept irremediably; and being cheered with the promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-night, and was lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom on the ground-floor of the cottage. There I found ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Union, but by her magnanimity she added to the Union six of its noblest States, and from their citizens at least she should never hear the cry that taunts her with slavery. Rather let that cry go forth from puritan and abolition Massachusetts, as her sons read over her ancient Quaker laws, or count up the nefarious gains their slave-trading fathers made, while enjoying the twenty years lease of the African slave trade, granted ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... are protected from the approaches of the seducer in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a Puritan of the old stamp, "Drowne has sold himself to the devil; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell is a ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... severity of punishments, as was probably necessary in a corrupt state of society. After the decemviral laws fell into disuse, the Romans in the days of the republic passed from extreme rigor to great lenity, as is observable in the transition from the Puritan regime to our own times in the United States. Capital punishment for several centuries was exceedingly rare, and was frequently prevented by voluntary exile. Under the empire, again, public executions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... was up-stairs. Of course she was old enough to know a great many things and to have ideas on religious subjects. But I think the Underhills were more intelligent than intellectual, and people were still living rather simple lives, not yet impregnated with ideas. They had not had the old Puritan training, and the ferment of science and philosophy and transcendentalism had not invaded the country places. To-night in the city there were wise heads proving and disproving the times and half times, and days and signs, but they really had no interest for Mrs. Underhill, ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... was born of a stern Puritan line in Salem, Massachusetts, the grimmest of all the Puritan communities. He was a graduate of Bowdoin College and lived much of his life at ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... weekly paper in her home town. She was only eighteen, and the most harum-scarum creature you ever saw. She had been engaged four times, and once to two boys at the same time. And she used to lay down the law in her advice column like a Puritan forefather. Just scored the girls who flirted and accepted valuable presents from men, and who met clandestinely ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the youngest member of Congress, being only twenty-five, was one of Mr. Lee's chief supporters, by his persevering industry, his charming conversation, and his impressive eloquence in debate. He was loved as a son by that stern and unyielding Puritan, Samuel Adams, then at the vigorous old age of fifty-four. He, too, with a voice that was never heard with inattention, supported the resolution; and indignantly rebuking what he was pleased to call a "temporizing spirit" among ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... Roosevelt my most vivid childish reminiscence is not something I saw, but a tale that was told me concerning him. In his boyhood Sunday was as dismal a day for small Calvinistic children of Dutch descent as if they had been of Puritan or Scotch Covenanting or French Huguenot descent—and I speak as one proud of his Holland, Huguenot, and Covenanting ancestors, and proud that the blood of that stark Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards flows in the veins of his children. One summer afternoon, after listening ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... that he was a citizen of Geneva transplanted. He had been bred in puritan and republican tradition, with love of God and love of law and freedom and love of country all penetrating it, and then he had been accidentally removed to a strange city that was in active ferment with ideas that were the direct abnegation of all these. In Paris the idea of a God ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... one of her chicks. Here lads! here's to the mousey Puritan lassies! They won't dance, they can't sing—Ah! well! here's to them till we come ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... day after it was made, by joining a general association, which by this time had been got up by many of the committees of correspondence, and which was called "a solemn league and covenant," after the famous bond of their Puritan forefathers. The nature of this league may be seen from the document which all its members signed. It declared that the compact had been entered into as the only means of avoiding the horrors of slavery, or the carnage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Paris in 1789 is the more impressive that it was not drawn by a Puritan or a Pharisee. Gouverneur Morris was eminently what is called a 'man of the world,' His diary abounds in proofs that, to use his own language, he was 'no enemy to the tender passion.' Indeed, while the elections for the States-General were going on, he appears ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... double-turreted monitors Puritan, Terror, and Amphitrite, contracted for under the act of March 3, 1883, is in process of construction. No work has been done during the past year on their armor for lack of the necessary appropriations. A fourth monitor, the Monadnock, still remains unfinished ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... paralleled by the Directoire in France, but on its better side it is closely analogous to the rule of Cromwell. The sincere Communists (and all the older members of the party have proved their sincerity by years of persecution) are not unlike the Puritan soldiers in their stern politico-moral purpose. Cromwell's dealings with Parliament are not unlike Lenin's with the Constituent Assembly. Both, starting from a combination of democracy and religious faith, were driven to sacrifice democracy to religion ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... this, it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It was these very doubts and fears which led him to see and resee so frequently the dethroned Charles, and which at last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepulchre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the still face of the royal victim, whose death he had himself effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... scholars; but found no popular acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin; one writer trying to supply the want by calling the man a 'suist', as one seeking his own things ('sua'), and the sin itself, 'suicism'. The gap, however, was not really filled up, till some of the Puritan writers, drawing on our Saxon, devised 'selfish' and 'selfishness', words which to us seem obvious enough, but which yet are little more than two hundred [and fifty] ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... banished themselves to the mountains: thence the English could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers, whom the English employed. And when Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain, and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow rich by importing slaves for Roman Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... would saddle the reputation of Middleton with the authorship of a dull and disjointed comedy, the work (it has hitherto been supposed) of the German substitute for Shakespeare. Middleton has no doubt left us more crude and shapeless plays than "The Puritan"; none, in my opinion—excepting always his very worst authentic example of farce or satire, "The Family of Love"—so heavy and so empty and so feeble. If it must be assigned to any author of higher rank than the new Shakespeare, I would suggest that it is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Milton, who introduces active sports among the recreations which he deemed worthy of angels, and (strange indeed for a Puritan!) included even dancing ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... through the grimy and sordid things of life. Still, there's something real in it, something healthy, too, compared with this—at least, some of it. The other night I was at a banquet, and I was afraid I saw you. You see, I have all sorts of old-fashioned ideas. I'm a Puritan of a sort, and am what these people would ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... casting his lot with it. At seventeen, he saw one night a real apparition of the just executed Strafford. The last act of his youth, which we can note here, was soon after he was twenty, when he fell in love with the charming and saintly Mary Collet. The rough Puritan Thorne had made her proposals at which she revolted, but she and Inglesant confessed love to each other; she saw, however, that they had a way of life marked out for themselves by an inner impulse and light. This calling ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wrong to kill anyone," said Virginia, who at times had a sweet puritan gravity, caught from some ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... Puritan dress, cloaks, shoes, caps, and collars. These people are well dressed, and do not seem to be poor. Perhaps they are simply longing to hear from their friends, and hoping the ship will bring some news of them. It may be that it has been due for several days, and each day ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter

... we'll have to do," sighed Mr. Bascomb, "and that will be to stop running the camp on a basis of old Puritan laws." ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... against the translation of Italian books, and the corrupt manners of living and false ideas which they seemed to him to breed. The Italianate Englishman became the chief part of the stock-in-trade of the satirists and moralists of the day. Stubbs, a Puritan chronicler, whose book The Anatomy of Abuses is a valuable aid to the study of Tudor social history, and Harrison, whose description of England prefaces Holinshed's Chronicles, both deal in detail with the Italian menace, and condemn in good set terms the costliness in ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... himself belong to that same d'Orleans Party.' What can be known and seen is, that his moon-visage does beam forth from that point of space. There likewise sits seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in formulas, of another sort. 'Peuple,' such according to Robespierre ought to be the Royal method of promulgating laws, 'Peuple, this is the Law I have framed for thee; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... and Norman in the stormy days when Richard Lionheart returned to his kingdom; Kenilworth, with the intrigues of Elizabeth's Court; The Fortunes of Nigel, with London life in the days of Charles First; Woodstock, with Cromwell's iron age; Peveril of the Peak, with the conflict between Puritan and Cavalier during ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... Haygarths back to the intestate's great-grandfather, who was a carpenter and a Puritan in the reign of Charles the First. He seems to have made money—how I have not been able to discover with any certainty; but it is more than probable he served in the civil wars, and came in for some of the plunder those crop-eared, psalm-singing, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... a Puritan lawyer, published his "Histriomastix," against plays, masques, balls, the decking of houses with evergreens at Christmas, &c., for which he was committed to the Tower, prosecuted in the Star Chamber, and sentenced ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... excellent judgment and undaunted {216} courage, however, contributed largely to the success of this bold venture. Captain Edward Tyng, a capable colonial sailor, was the commodore of the little fleet of thirteen vessels, carrying in all about two hundred guns. The Puritan spirit of New England had much influence in organising an expedition, and whose flag had a motto suggested by the Methodist revivalist, Whitfield: "Nil desperandum Christo duce." The story of the success of the New England troops, in conjunction ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... systematized and taught. Nor was the interest confined to divines. Louis XIV. discussed free will and predestination with Racine and Fenelon, even as the courtiers of Louis XV. discussed probabilities and mental reservations. And in New England, at Puritan firesides, the passing stranger in the olden times, when religion was a life, entered into theological discussions with as much zest as he now would describe the fluctuations of stocks or passing vanities of crinoline and hair dyes. Nor is it one of the best signs ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... white colonists were hard put to it by the Powatans, the good ship Mayflower had landed the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers on the Massachusetts Bay shore to the north, ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... is very careful to observe the holidays, of the year. The mixture of the old Dutch, the orthodox English, and the Puritan elements has tended to preserve, in all its purity, each of the festivals which were so dear to our fathers. The New Yorker celebrates his Thanksgiving with all the fervor of a New Englander, and at the same time keeps his Christmas feast as heartily as ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... have known more women of this kind, women who hide the passionate heart of a Helen beneath the austere life of a Diana, hoarding their gifts of love as a miser hoards his gold, partly because of cruel necessity, partly influenced by the impulse to deny inherited from Puritan ancestors. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... and Swedes, into our people's life. It was also a bond of union, North and South, too strong to be separated by civil strife. It is an element in the make-up of the South that will ever be a conservative force in behalf of theology, of law and order, of Puritan institutions. ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various

... performer, actor; pedant, pedagogue, doctrinaire, purist, euphuist, mannerist; grimacier; lump of affectation, precieuse ridicule[Fr], bas bleu[Fr], blue stocking, poetaster; prig; charlatan &c. (deceiver) 548; petit maitre &c. (fop) 854; flatterer &c. 935; coquette, prude, puritan. V. affect, act a part, put on; give oneself airs &c. (arrogance) 885; boast &c. 884; coquet; simper, mince, attitudinize, pose; flirt a fan; overact, overdo. Adj. affected, full of affectation, pretentious, pedantic, stilted, stagy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Matilda said she wouldn't let me wear anything flighty, so she's made me a dress like a Puritan, and my domino ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks

... story, an attempt has been made to illustrate the manners and habits of the earliest Puritan settlers in New England, and the trials and difficulties to which they were subjected during the first years of their residence in their adopted country. All the principal incidents that are woven into ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... share': Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, possessed a portion of the Bermudas, which bore his name. He was a jolly sailor in his habits, although a Puritan in ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... the wild rose blooms with a strange abundance. There is a beauty in the blossoms too of an almost exotic kind, a taint of deeper pink that shocks the Puritan flowers. Two hundred generations ago (generations, I mean, of roses) this was a village street; there was a floral decadence when they left their simple life and the roses came from the wilderness to ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... wore lace ruffles which were in the way, and was shaking them back a little. He had a long cadaverous face, clean shaven; straight hair of suspicious brownness, parted in the middle and plastered down on either side of his head; and a general air of being one of his own Puritan ancestors who should have appeared in black velvet and lace; and his punctilious manners strengthened this impression. The one trinket he displayed was a ring, which he wore on the forefinger of his right hand, a handsome intaglio carved out of crimson coral. It seemed to be the only ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... one else besides himself were in it. She must have gone out. Perhaps she had been really frightened and would tell somebody! How awkward if she should presently return with one of those grim aunts, or that solemn puritan-like husband of hers. Perhaps he had better decamp while the coast was still clear. She did not seem to be returning and there was no telling what the little fool ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... ignored or elaborately proved to have been wrong. It is true that Green called his book "A Short History of the English People"; but he seems to have thought it too short for the people to be properly mentioned. For instance, he calls one very large part of his story "Puritan England." But England never was Puritan. It would have been almost as unfair to call the rise of Henry of Navarre "Puritan France." And some of our extreme Whig historians would have been pretty nearly capable of calling the campaign of Wexford and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... discarded style. Antique is that which is either ancient in fact or ancient in style. The reference is to the style rather than to the age. We can speak of the antique architecture of a church just built. The difference between antiquated and antique is not in the age, for a Puritan style may be scorned as antiquated, while a Roman or Renaissance style may be prized as antique. The antiquated is not so much out of date as out of vogue. Old-fashioned may be used approvingly or contemptuously. In the latter case it becomes a synonym for antiquated; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity—not of the clandestine ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... during the times he was at home, there were often visitors to see him. On evenings when there were no visitors she always longed to say, "Come and sit in the easy chair, John, and we'll have a cozy time together," but her Puritan conscience usually overcame the promptings of her heart, and instead she would look at the clock and say brightly, "Oh, there's still time for you to get in an hour or two of study! Isn't ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson

... could not be content. He would like to have Masson's Life too in 6 vols. (with index), and he is apt to consider the great Puritan's prose still finer than his poetry, and will often take down the Areopagitica that he may breathe the air of high latitudes; but he has a corner in his heart for that evil living and mendacious bravo, but ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... name, addressed an open letter to King George III., which is printed in the "Salem Gazette," Oct. 31, 1769. It is a very quaint production, but it shows the writer's love of simplicity and downright honesty. He was a sturdy Puritan. ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various

... no disabilities upon his political enemies; and when Charles II. was restored to the throne the healing effect of the amnesty act then passed was so great that historians sometimes ask what in the world had become of that Puritan party which a moment before had seemed supreme in the land. At the close of the war of the Spanish Succession, the rebellious people of Catalonia were indemnified for their losses, at the request of England, and with a similar good effect. In view of such European precedents, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... and atavistic claims of primitive impulse in its many strange forms, is a prime business of religion; sometimes achieved in the sudden convulsion we call conversion, and sometimes by the slower process of education. The wrong way to do it is seen in the methods of the Puritan and the extreme ascetic, where all animal impulse is regarded as "sin" and repressed: a proceeding which involves the risk of grave physical and mental disorder, and produces even at the best a bloodless pietism. The right way to do it was described once for ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... can affect to despise establishments which could produce so many proofs of fancy, intellect, and erudition. The scattered fragments of that rich literature, which had escaped the fury of the Scandinavian, the ignorance and rapacity of the early Anglo- Norman, the blind fanaticism of the Puritan, could still in the seventeenth century furnish materials enough for the immense compilations of the Four Masters, Ward, Wadding, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... between Dives and Lazarus. Lazarus, presumably, was a better man than Dives. How could Dives justify himself for living in purple and fine linen, while Lazarus was lying at the gates, with the dogs licking his sores? The problem is one of all ages, and takes many forms. When the old Puritan saw a man going to the gallows, "There," he said, "but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford". When the rich man, entering his club, sees some wretched tatterdemalion, slouching on the pavement, there, he may say, goes Sir Gorgius Midas, but ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... of Liberty at heart wast thou, Above all beauty bright, all music clear: To thee she bared her bosom and her brow, Breathing her virgin promise in thine ear, And bound thee to her with a double vow,— Exquisite Puritan, grave Cavalier! ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... it was possible those noble sports might be ordained, and was soon satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up the mind to lewdness; that those that followed them, were the sons of Belial, and wore the mark of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... that code of rights and wrongs! Society was a stickler for form. If either he or Marjory had neglected the preliminaries, then he might have lain here alone for a week, with society shaking its Puritan head. This nurse woman might have come, but she did not count; and, besides, he had to get shot before ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... science, in a great measure peculiar to the present day, arises from the number of speculations which are ushered into the world to account for the same phenomena; every one, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, when he wished to cudgel a Puritan, has for his opinion "no exquisite reasons, but reasons good enough." In the periods of science immediately subsequent to the time of Bacon, men commenced their career by successful experiment; and having convinced the world of their aptitude for perceiving the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... to Walter Scott!—A monument forsooth! What has that bigot done for us, for freedom, or for truth? He always back'd the Cavalier against the Puritan, And sneer'd at just fraternity, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... in his "Hard Measure," gives a sketch of vivid historical interest of the sacrilege committed during the Puritan rebellion, and when, in 1643, the cathedral was in the possession of the fanatics. "Lord, what work was here, what clattering of glasses, what beating down of Walls, what tearing up of Monuments, what pulling down of Seates, what wresting out ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... cannot be blind to the conviction that they have to face much modern prejudice. On the one hand there is still rife in the Church of England the Puritan spirit, which condemns in one and the same category things essentially Roman, and things which are really primitive, but which have been retained by Rome. On the other hand, there undoubtedly exists an occasional reaction from this Puritan spirit, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown

... hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... to me that the hansom cab simply turned over on top of me, like an enormous hood or hat. I then found myself crawling out from underneath it in attitudes so undignified that they must have added enormously to that great cause to which the Anti-Puritan League and I have recently dedicated ourselves. I mean the cause of the pleasures of the people. As to my demeanour when I emerged, I have two confessions to make, and they are both made merely in the interests of ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... on her toes, having music wherever she goes, are indissolubly connected with the early years not only of ourselves but many prior generations. In fact, the Ancient Cross has been rebuilt since the days, when in Drunken Barnaby's Journal, we are made familiar with the puritan "who hanged his cat on a Monday for killing of a mouse on a Sunday." The quaint old town and its people are rapidly modernizing; but they cling to the old traditions. Both in pictorial and legendary lore we have some Banburies of another kind altogether, ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... probably grew more from the public voice, or perhaps from Southampton's influence, than from his own preference. Before the Poet's death, we may trace the beginnings of that corruption which, rather stimulated than discouraged by Puritan bigotry and fanaticism, reached its height some seventy years later; though its course was for a while retarded by King Charles the First, who, whatever else may be said of him, was unquestionably a man of as high and elegant tastes in literature and art as England could boast ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... supplanted the New England Primer and became the first book in the hands of every pupil. Less marked in its religious instruction, the speller spread through the South and into regions where the people were not trained in the Puritan doctrines. The wonderful sales of Webster's Spelling Book remained for many years after the War; but have now dropped to insignificance. It is not probable that other books will under present conditions repeat the history of these books. There is now no wide region of fertile country rapidly ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail

... puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted young Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There was too much of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner of Stevens, to satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms



Words linked to "Puritan" :   abstainer, puritanic, ascetic, disagreeable person, protestant, prude, unpleasant person, puritanical



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