"Puritanical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was such a person as God and such a person as Jesus Christ. Their being was to her the full and only pledge of every bliss, every childlike delight. She believed in the God of the whole earth, not in a puritanical God. She never imagined it could be wrong to dance: merry almost in her very nature, she now held it a duty to be glad. Fond of sweets, she would have thought it wrong to refuse what God meant her to like; but she had far more pleasure in giving ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... PURITANICAL ZEAL. It is known that there was one of the statutes in our ancestors' code which imposed a penalty for the wearing of long hair. At the time Endicott was the magistrate of this town he caused the following ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... Board enquiry. The police are harried in the discharge of their duties. The rector's bronchitis is intensified to a dangerous extent. Sabina Gallagher's red-haired cousin, whose name I've not yet been able to discover, is perfectly miserable. Poor old Callaghan, who means well, though he has a most puritanical dread of impropriety, is worn to a shadow. It rests with you whether this state of things is to continue or not. You and, so far as I can see at present, you alone, are in a position to arrange for the downfall of Simpkins. Is it or is it not your duty, your simple duty, to do what you can, even ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... civilization on the western continent, they will set apart seasons for innocent mirth, in which they enter into its spirit with a joyousness totally devoid of calculation or of care. I love this trait in their character, because, perhaps, my own spirits incline to the volatile. I like not that puritanical coldness of intercourse which acts upon men as the winter winds do upon the surface of the mountain streams, freezing them into immovable propriety; and less do I delight in that festivity where calculation ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... big question here," he added. "Your long respectable pedigrees and your nice little Puritanical codes can all go to blazes—this big boat will throw 'em all overboard for you—if you can answer, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... felt himself greatly moved by fermenting ideas and ambitions which he had not completely mastered.... There is a kind of uncomfortable discrepancy between the scene and the style, a breath of Paris and the boulevards blowing through the pine-trees of a puritanical Norwegian village.... But the book is a most interesting link between the early peasant-stories and the great novels of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... began as a religious reformer, and ended as a rebel king. It was his mission, he declared, to purge the true Faith of its worldliness and corruptions, to lead the followers of the prophet into the paths of chastity, simplicity, and holiness; with the puritanical zeal of a Calvin, be denounced junketings and merrymakings, songs and dances, lewd living and all the delights of the flesh. He fell into trances, he saw visions, he saw the prophet and Jesus, and the Angel Izrail accompanying ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... of philosophical poets), Pope even in a certain way. But read the interesting paper which late in life he devoted to Shelley. He treats Shelley as a man admirably, with freedom alike from the maudlin sentiment of our modern chatterers and from Puritanical preciseness. He is not too hard on him in any way, he thinks him a pleasing personality and a thinker distorted but interesting. Of Shelley's strictly poetical quality he says nothing, if he knew or felt anything. In fact, of lyrical poetry generally, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... strong that the claim was often allowed, to the destruction of uniformity and the undermining of authority. To give an instance or two: A newcomer would insist that, as he might play cards in his native town, he ought not to be expected to obey puritanical restrictions in the place to which he came. The result was that the resident Jews would clamor against foreigners enjoying special privileges, as in this way all attempts to control gambling might be defeated. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... truth probably was, so far as we can judge, that the man had nothing in his stiff nature and puritanical education, certainly nothing in his own early life, to make him respond to the uninteresting helplessness ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring that "she meant to marry a Prince," and unkindly as fate had treated her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition. It may be that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that had ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... 1810, at Bethel, Connecticut—how serious and puritanical it sounds! —would have died with a merely local reputation unless chance had favored him by putting in his way something to make a hit with. He stumbled across Charles H. Stratton, the famous, the immortal 'General ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... God, had been concerned, and they had commented the civil, not the divine, law. They did this so copiously that, to give one instance of it, the exposition of St. Matthew's Gospel took up ninety homilies, and that of St. John's eighty-seven, in the works of Chrysostom; which puts me in mind of a Puritanical parson who, if I mistake not—for I have never looked into the folio since I was a boy and condemned sometimes to read in it—made one hundred and nineteen sermons on the hundred and ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... one other aspect of this great subject, which is almost peculiar to New England, the home of reform. Certain Puritanical pessimists have argued that the use of tobacco is immoral. There are few, except our own sober people, who would admit this question at all. We would treat this prejudice with the respect due to all sincere reforms. And we have attempted to show, that, since all races have used ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Hotel." He was a man of thirty, with soft, pleasing features and a singular litheness of movement, which, combined with a nut-brown, gypsy complexion, at first suggested a foreigner. But his dialect, to the colonel's ears, was distinctly that of New England, and to this was added a puritanical and sanctimonious drawl. "He looked," said the colonel in after years, "like a blank light mulatter, but talked like a blank Yankee parson." For all that, he was acceptable to his host, who may have felt that his reminiscences of his plantation on the James ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the gloomy and puritanical faces of the officers of the court-martial. Other questions were put, and then came the vital points. To the first of these, as to whether young Enderby had uttered malignant and seditious libels against the Protector, the old ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no. Always in moderation. Do not acquire the habit of drinking. It is useless; and, after all that is said in favor of it by our mutual friend, Omar, and others, I can never see that a man is worse off for never having been drunk, and I am even Puritanical enough to think that he is better off, and, moreover, he has more self-respect, to say nothing of the respect of others. Nobody ever loses caste by refusing to drink. It is a difficult thing to do sometimes; but you know the old adage, that any man can lead ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... of the American colonies had been a little more precise it would have run to this effect. The colonies of the New England region were mainly peopled by a hardy, industrious, sober, frugal race, still strongly Puritanical in profession and in practice, and knowing but little of the extremes of fortune. Neither great poverty nor great wealth was common among those sturdy farmers, who tended their own farms, tilled their own land, lived upon their own produce, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the pamphlet is the extremely puritanical tendency of its sentiments. It was written at the period when Mary was sending sermon-like letters to George Blood, and breathes the same spirit of stern adherence to religious principles, though ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to the throne of England was a bid for the banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again pursue their puritanical philosophy. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... woman better than to listen to such whispered words as these; the most puritanical among them listens even when she ought not to reply to them; and Rastignac, having once begun, continued to pour out his story, dropping his voice, that she might lean and listen; and Mme. de Nucingen, smiling, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... interjection should be this word;—not but that the oath, by conscience, was happily still remaining then in Scotland, taking the place of the mediaeval 'by St. Andrew,' we in England, long before the Scot, having lost all sense of the Puritanical appeal to private conscience, as of the Catholic oath, 'by St. George;' and our uncanonized 'by George' in sonorous rudeness, ratifying, not now our common conscience, but our ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... It made a tremendous sensation, but even his enemies admired his courage. The question of his financial probity was settled for all time, although the missile, failing in one direction, quivered in the horrified brains of many puritanical voters. Mrs. Reynolds, now living with Clingman, made no denial, and it is doubtful if even she would have echoed the one animadversion of the discomfited enemy,—that Hamilton had given the name of a mistress to the public. It is a weak and dangerous ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... one of the most important factors in the anti-slavery war and victory, but they have been equally potent in emancipating the minds of his generation from the gloomy superstitions of the puritanical religion. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his eulogy of Whittier, says that his influence on the religious thought of the American people has been far greater than that of the occupant ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... would make the world far happier than it is. Had he written only Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood, the Country Parson would have well deserved the vast 'popularity' which his writings have so justly won. 'Covenanting austerity' and Puritanical ultra-propriety are repulsive to him and, he deals them many a brave blow. He sees life as it is with singular shrewdness, catches its lights and shadows with artistic talent, and like all tender and genial writers, keenly appreciates humor, and conveys it to us either delicately or energetically, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to us since father's death, says of him: "From a boy Pardee was remarkable for his uprightness, and bold and strict honesty, and it was a maxim among the boys to say, 'As honest as Pard, Butler.' He and his father before him were specimens of puritanical honesty and courage, and had they lived in the days of Cromwell and in England, would doubtless have ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... in some hot-water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid —English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and, like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious ambition to become my wife. A maid of six-and-thirty, my word! Brought up in the strictest puritanical principles, a steady sitting hen, who maintains that unfaithful wives should be publicly burnt. 'Where will you find wood enough?' I asked her. I could have sent her to the devil, for two hundred and forty thousand francs a year are no equivalent for liberty, nor a ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... you know women. In your comprehension we are automatons, puppets, with no hearts nor heats of desire of our own, with no springs of conduct save those of the immaculate and puritanical sort that New England crystallized a century ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... six-year term for the President because it would safeguard him from selfish scheming for another period of power. Partly because of the lack of dash and compelling force in Hayes, but more because of the low standards of political action which were common at the time, his scruples seemed puritanical and were held up to ridicule as the milk-and-water and "old-Woman" policies of "Granny Hayes." His public, as well as-his private life, was unimpeached in a time when lofty principles were not common and when ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... behalf he is writing established itself by a forcible suppression of the Parliamentary majority. It survives now only by the curious passage in it which tells us that William Shakspeare was "the closet companion" of Charles I in the "solitudes" of the end of his life; and by the puritanical allusion to the "vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia" from which, however "full of worth and wit" in its own kind, it was a disgrace to the king to borrow a prayer at so grave an hour. Perhaps as ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Calvinistic theology, with its gloomy, turbulent, and intolerant spirit, may be traced the high tone of moral feeling and practical reverence of religion which have honourably distinguished the people of England. Happily, Calvinism in its palmy days was confined to the Puritanical party, which made comparatively small progress within the pale of the Church; while the most influential of her clergy, and the great majority of her well educated laity, embraced the doctrines of a more generous and scriptural theology. Without ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... year 1599, the Hall of the Stationers underwent as great a purgation as was carried on in Don Quixote's library. Warton gives a list of the best writers who were ordered for immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and Bancroft, urged by the Puritanical and Calvinistic factions. Like thieves and outlaws, they were ordered to be taken wheresoever they may be found.—"It was also decreed that no satires or epigrams should be printed for the future. No plays were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the long coat?" said another, who had not participated in the banter of his companions on the Puritanical devices of Charles and his cronies. He was jerking his head aside to where a man whom we have known in other scenes was pushing his way ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... were belles, or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn't have a particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and puritanical." ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... was a young nobleman of sporting proclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immensely popular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical and the narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence, the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and in quality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... silenced the Great Organ of that pleasant rural town. So far, good; but he adds that Massachusetts takes umbrage at the first syllable of our name, on account of its being at variance with the prohibitory law of that pleasant but Puritanical State. Certainly, in a moral point of view, it is better to be in a Puritanical State than in a State of Punch; but Massachusetts, it is said, is very sly about the liquor business, and takes her "nips," regularly, behind the door. This may account, probably, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... a good many years younger than her husband; they were united by the intensest affection; but while she devoted herself to him with a perfect understanding of, and sympathy with, his somewhat jealous and puritanical nature, she did not escape the severity of his sense of responsibility, and his natural instinct for attempting to draw those nearest to him into the circle of his high, if rigid, standards. Long afterwards, Hugh grew to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... know. I was listening at one of the windows, and I heard you tell mother—dear old puritanical mother—that you had crept away without leave from the learned professor, and had got into difficulties. Oh, didn't I just love you for it! There's a Miss Frost here who tries to teach me; but, bless you! she can't knock much learning into me. She is as terrified ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... to the reviewer, whose theatrical apprenticeship had been thorough, yet it never failed to awaken his deepest cynicism. Somewhere within him was a puritanical streak, and he still cherished youthful memories. He reflected now that it was he who had laid the foundation for the popularity of the girl he had come to interview; for he had picked her out of the chorus of the preceding Revue and commented so ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... compromise with his instincts and his human flesh. There seekers of perfection are among the noblest of the race, admired in the abstract but condemned by their friends as "too good," "impractical," as possessors of the "New England conscience." One of the effects of a Puritanical bringing-up is a belief that pleasure is unworthy, especially in the sex field and even in marriage. Now and then one meets a patient caught between perfectly proper desire and an obsession that such pleasure is debasing; ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister's—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as the other's looked puritanical. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... perhaps that of a tribe, became in Media the name of the priesthood, and so furnished an additional title for Mazdeism. It is to this stage of the religion that the priestly legislation of the Vendidad, with all its puritanical regulation of life, is to be ascribed. (The practice of exposing the bodies of the dead to be devoured by birds of prey is probably of Scythian origin.) In this period also, remote from the origin of the religion, we find a new view of Zarathustra himself and of his revelation. In the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... think that the credit of that act cannot be denied to Howard. In a later time he passed under the control of Sherman in the West, a shrewd and relentless judge of men, and Sherman trusted him to the utmost. To a group of officers in their cups who were chaffing Howard for being Puritanical, Sherman curtly said: "Let Howard alone; I want one ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... wickedness of the times, because some bird-catchers were busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian world is permitted," said Johnson, "to dance and sing and celebrate Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unnecessary scruples, Sir," continued he, "provokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity, without reaping the reward of superior ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... became a real issue before the seventeenth century. We have seen that some of the Greek thinkers were banished, or even executed, for their new ideas. The Roman officials, as well as the populace, pestered the early Christians, not so much for the substance of their views as because they were puritanical, refused the routine reverence to the gods, and prophesied the downfall ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... April, 1865, they were in service, and no battery saw more service or suffered more in it. Its story was a part of the story of the Southern Army in Virginia. The Captain was a rigid disciplinarian, and his company had more work to do than most new companies. A pious churchman, of the old puritanical type not uncommon to Virginia, he looked after the spiritual as well as the physical welfare of his men, and his chaplain or he read prayers at the head of his company every morning during the war. At first he was not popular with the men, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... race; the genius of Chaucer, Spencer and Sidney revelled in the feudal halls and enchanted vistas of the middle ages; Shakespeare delineated the British mind in its grave and comic moods; Milton reflected the sober aspect and spiritual aspirations of the Puritanical era; while at later periods Pope, Goldsmith and Cowper pourtrayed the softer features of an advanced ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... politicians were trying to form a nucleus of progressives in the loose array of the Conservative Party. Giraud himself occasionally spent the evening at Madame Marneffe's, and she flattered herself that she should also capture Victorin Hulot; but the puritanical lawyer had hitherto found excuses for refusing to accompany his father and father-in-law. It seemed to him criminal to be seen in the house of the woman who cost his mother so many tears. Victorin Hulot was ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... for brevity we may term the stories based upon supernatural agency: this was a favourite with olden Persia; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of the "Prophets," strongly objected to it because preferred by the more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud and the Koran, quite as fabulous without the halo and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... anchorite in the desert, there seems to have been but little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uniformly represented as cheerful and social in demeanour, and against whom it was expressly urged that he came eating and drinking, making no presence of puritanical holiness. He was neither a puritan, like the Essenes, nor a ritualist, like the Pharisees. Besides which, both John and Jesus seem to have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene doctrine of the speedy advent of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... statements. The inference, however, seems to be clear. Collier's attack could not reform the stage. The evolution took the form of degeneration. He could, indeed, give utterance to the disapproval of the stage in general, which we call Puritanical, though it was by no means confined to Puritans or even to Protestants. Bossuet could denounce the stage as well as Collier. Collier was himself a Tory and a High Churchman, as was William Law, of the Serious Call, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... evening. Mildred coaxed her father to accompany her to hear the violinist. Mr. Wallace was not fond of music; "it had been knocked out of him on the farm up in Vermont, when he was a boy," he would apologetically explain, and besides he had the old puritanical abhorrence of stage people—putting them all in one class—as puppets who danced for played or talked for an idle and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... This rigid, puritanical principle of mine, however, did not declare against the unrighteousness of falling in love ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... a pillar in the Congregational Church. At the decline and disintegration of the Universalist society, she rejoiced cordially as if a temple of Baal or an idol of Ashtaroth had been overturned. Yes, grandma was Puritanical—not to the extent of persecution, but a Puritan in the severity of her faith and in the exacting nicety of her interpretation of her duties to God and mankind. Grandma's Sunday began at six o'clock Saturday evening; by that hour her house was swept and garnished, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as these scenes are filled with. A Puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us. Those noble and liberal casuists could discern ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... to desperate trial that very night. Just next to Stanton's apartment were lodged two most uncongenial neighbors. One of them was a puritanical weaver, who had been driven mad by a single sermon from the celebrated Hugh Peters, and was sent to the madhouse as full of election and reprobation as he could hold,—and fuller. He regularly repeated over the five points while daylight lasted, and imagined himself preaching ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of Nevil and Lilamani, her clear call could never seem either a puritanical snare of the flesh or a delusion of the senses; but rather, a grace of the spirit, the joy of things seen detached from self-interest: the visible proof that love, not power, is the last word of Creation. Happily for him, its outward form and inward essence had been his ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... my last jaunt to Dixie, etc. I have carefully put out the impression that I need some repairs, which cannot be finished this week; and have told one or two confidentially that I could not leave until the arrival of a certain cargo from Nassau which is due to-morrow. That Puritanical craft which started off at noon does not expect me for several days, and to-night I shall rub my fingers and sail out right in her wake. Ha! ha! how they will howl! What gnashing of teeth there will be, when they hear of me in a Confederate port! And ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... de Netteville stood thinking—not, apparently, of the puritanical wife; the dangerous softness which overspread the face could have had no ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and perhaps encouraged by the sympathy he showed, she had spoken on impulse without reserve, and Blake listened with pity. The girl, brought up, subject to wholesome Puritanical influences, in such surroundings as she had described, must have suffered a cruel shock when suddenly plunged into the society of the rakes and gamblers who frequented her ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... fact that dancing was taught in nearly all of these institutes. In spite of Puritanical training, in spite of the thunder-bolts of colonial preachers, the tide of public opinion could not be stayed, and the girls would learn the waltz and the prim minuet. Times had indeed changed since the day when Cotton Mather so sternly spoke his opinion on such an ungodly performance: ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase, having descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of breaking out upon her in language as far removed from that of conventional politeness as his puritanical principles would permit. Doubtless he considered it a rebuking of Satan, but forgot that, although one of the godly, he could hardly on that ground lay claim to larger privilege in the use of bad language than the archangel Michael. For the old ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... country. To the eye of a mere visitor France is the most moral of the four Great Powers—France, Russia, England, Germany; has the strongest family life and the most seemly streets. Young men and maidens are never seen walking or lying about, half-embraced, as in puritanical England. Fire is not played with—openly, at least. The slow-fly amorousness of the British working classes evidently does not suit the quicker blood of France. There is just enough of the South in the French to keep demonstration of affection away from daylight. A certain school ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... is not narrowly tailored to further the library's interest in protecting patrons from being unwillingly exposed to offensive, sexually explicit material. As discussed in our findings of fact, the filters required by CIPA block substantial numbers of Web sites that even the most puritanical public library patron would not find offensive, such as http://federo.com, a Web site that promotes federalism in Uganda, which N2H2 blocked as "Adults Only, Pornography," and http://www.vvm.com/bond/home.htm, a site for aspiring dentists, which was blocked by Cyberpatrol as "Adult/Sexually ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... his History of the Public Revenue, in which Smith gave him every assistance in his power, and he had actually finished a treatise on the Christian Sabbath, which, in deference to Smith's advice, he never gave to the press. The object of this treatise was to show that the puritanical Sabbath observance of Scotland had no countenance in Holy Scripture, and that, while part of the day ought certainly to be devoted to divine service, the rest might be usefully employed in occupations of a character not strictly religious without infringing any divine law. When the work ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... a proof of what has been doubted, namely, that the theatres were not permitted to be open during Lent, in the reign of James I. The restriction was waived in the next reign, as we find from the puritanical Prynne:—"There are none so much addicted to stage-playes, but when they goe unto places where they cannot have them, or when, as they are suppressed by publike authority, (as in times of pestilence, and in Lent, till now of late) ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... their complaints, and herself assured them that the rumour which had alarmed them was unfounded. [462] By this time Saint Bartholomew's day drew near; and the great annual fair, the delight of idle apprentices and the horror of Puritanical Aldermen, was opened in Smithfield with the usual display of dwarfs, giants, and dancing dogs, the man that ate fire, and the elephant that loaded and fired a musket. But of all the shows none proved so attractive as a dramatic performance which, in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lorenzo, a democratic reaction took place under an enthusiastic and puritanical monk, Savonarola, who welcomed the advent of the French king, Charles VIII, in 1494, and aided materially in the expulsion of the Medici. Savonarola soon fell a victim to the plots of his Florentine enemies and to the vengeance of the pope, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... they who want true taste and feeling."[58] Having this wholesome counsel ever before him, he can be more generously appreciative of the genius of Moliere, more justly discerning in his analysis of the spirit of Rousseau,[59] and more free of the puritanical clatter against Voltaire than any of his fellow-critics. With German literature his familiarity was bounded on the one hand by Schiller's "Robbers," on the other by the first part of "Faust," the entire gap between these being ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... had really such an Affair upon his Hands, and he knew the Person, he had to do with, to be a resolute Man that understood the Sword, do you think he would have Patience or be at Leisure to hearken to all that puritanical Stuff, which you have been heaping together? Do you think (for that is the Point) it would have any Influence ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... some radical vice in their constitution, which could so far debase female honour as to leave it problematical, whether or not the violaters of it, in any sense or degree, were capable of any thing but infamy. 'Twere too puritanical, perhaps, to join Cowper in his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... be easy to pick out on the shelves of almost any public library books that are a physiological scandal, printed in type that it is an outrage to place before any self-respecting reader. I have seen copies of "Tom Jones" that I should be willing to burn, as did a puritanical British library-board of newspaper notoriety. My reasons, however, would be typographic, not moral, and I might want to add a few copies of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," without prejudice to the authors' share in those works, which I admire and respect. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... prosperous High Street, and indeed Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial and ruddy shop—a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was growing ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... splendours, by way of costume, for she had not brought them with her in her dress-basket. There were near green hills, and far blue mountains, and certain rocky eminences in the middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible piano, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... would get down on my knees, and repeat a confession and supplication at his dictation, it might avail. Enslaved as I was, I of course complied; and then underwent a humiliation that, even in my horrified state, was very bitter. I had always, in my most puritanical days, kicked at the doctrine that we are all such abominable, hell-deserving, self-degraded creatures, responsible for our own ruin, that it is the wonder of creation that God would give our souls any least chance of heaven. I had ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... habitually reading the Sunday newspapers day after day would be extremely bad; nor must we forget that an eternity of Sundays means the elimination 'from our midst,' as the novelists say, of baseball, of circuses, of horse-racing, and other necessities of life, unless we are prepared to cast over the Puritanical view of Sunday which now prevails. It would substitute Dr. Watts for 'Annie Rooney.' We should lose 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' entirely, which is ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... her. Her character is not easily sounded. But no doubt she has the puritanical spirit in a rather rare degree. I daily thank the fates that my wife grew up apart from that branch of the family. Of all the accursed—But this is an old topic; better not to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... a decidedly offensive odor, which can be noticed at some distance and to which some men and women are very susceptible. There are some women who never take a vaginal douche. Some consider it a useless and unnecessary luxury; while some orthodox puritanical women consider it an ungodly procedure (forgetting that cleanliness is next to godliness) fit only for women of gay and questionable character. If these orthodox women knew what was good for them—and for their health—they would take a douche at least during menstruation, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... holiday-makers carry packets of basil leaves and flowers, which they place upon the grave of the Mother Pilgrim, silently repeating as they do so the 'Fatiha' or prayers for the dead. Others more Puritanical, perchance more sceptical, utter not their prayers to the grave; but as the words pass their lips, turn their faces seawards, remembering Holy Mecca in the far west. Glance for a minute within the room that enshrines the tomb, and you will see the walls hung with tiny toy cradles,—the votive ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... war of bigotry was waged against May-poles, wakes, fairs, church music, fiddles, dancing, puppet shows, Whitsun ales—in short, everything wearing the attire of popular amusement and diversion. The rhyme recording Jack Horner's gloomy conduct was, in fact, a satire on Puritanical aversion to ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... had pooh-poohed her exalted ideas and thought them womanish; in Nan, he was inclined to call them beautiful. Of course, he said to himself, her ideas did not affect him; men could not guide their lives by a woman's standard; nevertheless, her notions were pretty, although puritanical; and he had no desire to see them changed. He would not have Nan ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... other passengers approach us, who, by their often turning to one another, and their laying down arguments with their hands, seemed to be in warm debate together; which was as we conjectured; for when they drew nearer to us, they proved to be a termagant High-Flyer, and a puritanical Scripturian, a fiery Scotchman: Occasional Conformity was their subject; for I heard the Scot tell him 'twas all popery, downright popery, and that the inquisition in Spain was christianity to it, by retarding the sons of grace ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... his wife, "is, I fancy from what I have seen of him, of a different type to his father and grandfather. I met him the other day when I was out, and he spoke as naturally and outspokenly as Walter himself. He seems to have got rid of the Puritanical twang altogether. At any rate, he will do Walter no harm; and, indeed, I should say that there was a solid good sense about him, which will do Master Walter, who is somewhat disposed to be a madcap, ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... Governor Burnett, looking as if he had just received an undutiful communication from the House of Representatives and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and somewhat puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an imperious old dame not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a very young man, wore the expression of warlike enterprise which long afterward made ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... anything neglected to repress this Christ-tide, because its keeping was inbred in the people, and they hated this sour puritanical feeling, and the doing away with their accustomed festivities. Richard Kentish told the House of Commons so in very plain language. Said he: "The people of England do hate to be reformed; so now, a prelatical priest, with a superstitious ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... soon as she was alone in the room, stood in the middle of it, scowling,—for she could scowl. "I'll not go near them," she said to herself,—"nasty, stupid, dull, puritanical drones. If he don't like it, he may lump it. After all it's no such great catch." Then she sat down to reflect whether it was or was not a catch. As soon as ever Lord Fawn had left her after the engagement was made, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... objection to the proposed changes. They feel, as several of them admitted to me, that if the barrier which separates them from the rest of the population were in any way broken down, they could no longer preserve that stern Puritanical discipline which at present constitutes their force. Hence, though the Government was disposed to make important concessions, hundreds of families sold their property and emigrated to America. The movement, however, did ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... respect for the King, and not much liking for his minister, Lord North. "I see him in no light, but that of a Minister, and in that I see him full of defects, and of all men I ever yet sate down to dinner with the most disagreeable. But he is so, in part from a scholastic, puritanical education, to which has been superadded the flattery of University parsons, led captains, and Treasury dependants. Without this, he would have been a pleasant companion. He has parts, information, and a good share of real wit, and (is), I believe, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... "And his Puritanical State has heaped every honour on him that it can think of. Tell me the biography of Senator Ward—all that is too awful to be printed in the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... us—that nothing but that could give him a perfect right. They regard the father of their spirits as their governor! They yield the idea of the Ancient of Days, 'the glad creator,' and put in its stead a miserable, puritanical martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness, but for his rights; not for the eternal purities, but the goody proprieties. The prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the hope, all the colour, all the worth, out of ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... was tenacious in his intention to have me in his workshop, where he needed more apprentices, but my mother was still more obstinate in hers that I should have the education; and in the decision the voices of my brothers were too potent not to hold the casting vote. In the stern, Puritanical manner of the family, I had been more or less the enfant gate of all its members, except my brother Paul, the third of my brothers, who, coming into the knowledge of domestic affairs at the time when the family ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Will to Truth—a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope—has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... observant as the critical moment approaches, thus denoting his firm and unwavering trust in the God of Israel. David makes but few gestures, but always assumes a reverential attitude when he mentions the name of God—not puritanical by any means, but expressive of humble hope and ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... thy way that most puritanical of Puritans, the praying, cheating, canting, hypocritical, long-faced Master Spikeman?" cried Arundel. "I wonder what new mischief he hath now on foot, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... fantastic order, nor, like Washington Irving, with the faults and foibles of men, but he struck at the very heart of the social life of his countrymen's ancestors with caustic and relentless satire. Some of the more puritanical objected to the moral tendencies of Thackeray's lectures, and argued that the naughty scapegraces of the British court should not have been thus exhumed for the edification of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... immediately invaded with Enquirers and Commissioners. They are a crying evil." "Do not imagine I am going to rat. I am a thoroughly honest, and, I will say, liberal person, but have never given way to that puritanical feeling of the Whigs against dining ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... suspicion. His business motto—unfortunately, a motto that he never followed—has often been attributed, because of its canny shrewdness, to Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The idea was to put all your eggs in one basket—and then—watch that basket! His anti-Puritanical convictions find concrete expression in his assertion that few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Truly classic, in usage if not in form, is his happy saying that faith is believing ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... plain teaching of the text is that the simple act of trusting beneath the shadow of God's wings brings to us an ever fresh and flowing river of gladness, of which we may drink. The whole conception of religion in the Bible is gladsome. There is no puritanical gloom about it. True, a Christian man has sources of sadness which other men have not. There is the consciousness of his own sin, and the contest that he has daily to wage; and all things take a soberer colouring to the eye that has been accustomed to look, however dimly, upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... faults. Do you know, count, that persons of our time of life—not that you belong to the class, you are still a young man,—but as I was saying, persons of our time of life have been very unfortunate this year. For example, look at the puritanical procureur, who has just lost his daughter, and in fact nearly all his family, in so singular a manner; Morcerf dishonored and dead; and then myself covered with ridicule through the villany of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impatience I seized the two long plaits, and twisted them now this way, now that. Astonishing the difference which hair-dressing can make! I have read of a heroine who passed successfully as her own twin sister by the simple device of plainly brushed hair and puritanical garments, the sister, of course, sporting marcelle waves and Parisian costumes. I dipped my brush in the water-jug and dragged back my own hair in a plastered mass, clamping the plaits to my head. I looked like a Dutch doll! ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... villains. The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the "moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. Bertram was succeeded in 1817 by Manuel, and in 1819 by Fredolfo. Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. Women, or Pour et Contre, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably reviewed by Scott.[59] Melmoth the Wanderer, Maturin's masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by his last work, The Albigenses, a historical romance, following Scott's design rather than ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Virginia gallows to the throne and the glory of martyrdom. Sumner was not able to take up the task which his hands had dropped until the troublous winter of 1859-60. Those four fateful years of suffering had not abated his hatred of slavery. That hatred and the Puritanical sternness and intolerance of his nature had on the contrary intensified his temper and purpose as an anti-slavery leader. He was then in personal appearance the incarnation of iron will and iron convictions. ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the habit of my boyhood. Salome was my oldest friend. We've played together in this very room, again and again. She was my good angel. Until—No matter. You are her child. Not like her at all in face or manner. She was always gentle, and shrank from giving pain. Truthful and puritanical as she was in her ideas, she had the tact, the knowledge to say things without hurting those whom she corrected. She corrected me often and often, when we were young, but she hurt me—never. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... frequently asserted that they never had anything to do with Browne. [4] Yet it is probable that it was Browne's influence which turned Greenwood's puritanical convictions to Separatist principles. Barrowe had been graduated from Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1569-70; Browne, from Corpus Christi in 1572. The two men, so different in character, probably did not meet ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... passed before the sun a few months ago, looking as if we could take her between our thumb and finger, like a bullet or a marble? And time, too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun-down" of an old-fashioned, puritanical, judaical first day of the week, which a pious fraud christened "the Sabbath"? Was it a fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week? Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... appreciative Germany sometimes nods in her critical councils. Certainly I have had my share of scourging; for my critics have most religiously observed the warning of 'Spare the rod and spoil the child'; and henceforth if my writings are not model, well-behaved, puritanical literary children, my censors must be exonerated from all blame, and I will give testimony in favor of the zeal and punctuality of these self-elected officials of the public whipping-post. The canons have not ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... thing as a straight crook, so they maintained. But be that as it may, Ben Miller certainly differed from the usual run of sporting-men, and he professed peculiar ideas regarding the conduct of his trade. Those ideas were almost puritanical in their nature. Proprietorship of recreation centers similar to the Rialto had bred in Mr. Miller a profound distrust of women as a sex and of his own ability successfully to deal with them; in consequence, he refused to tolerate their presence in his immediate vicinity. That they were ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... a new lease of life by the return home of Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his betrothal to Amelie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ducks his head and takes a mouthful, and then elevates his head again while munching it with great gusto, wearing meanwhile an expression of intense satisfaction mingled with timidity, as though he thinks the enjoyment too good to last long, they look as cosey and fussy as a gathering of Puritanical grand-dames drinking tea and gossiping over the latest news. Within a mile of the Ispahan gate are two other gates, and between them is an area devoted entirely to the brick-making industry. Here among ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... don't know anything about it. I know Ninitta followed Herman to America, for she told me so; and I am sure he had no idea of marrying her when she got here. Anybody can put two and two together, I suppose, especially if you know what infernally Puritanical notions ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Rabelais' rich stream of immortal nectar, or sweetly hugging themselves over the lovely mischievousness of Tristram Shandy! But one must be tolerant; one must make allowances. The world of books is no puritanical bourgeois-ridden democracy; it is a large free country, a great Pantagruelian Utopia, ruled ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... Sir Timothy, why, what a Pox dost thou bring that damn'd Puritanical, Schismatical, Fanatical, Small-beer-Face of thine into good Company? Give him a full Glass to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... patriarchal and half-puritanical training, but softened materially by his mother's almost excessive care, it had left, as it were, a kind of poetic perfume that clung about ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... all, the red and the blue, the furious and the tranquil, the puritanical and the licentious, the mystical and the intemperate, those that had voted for the death of kings, and those in which the frauds in the grocery trade had been denounced; and everywhere the tenants cursed the landlords; the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... to elaborate comforts. There are people whom I know who do this, and who, even though they live with some degree of wealth, are yet themselves obviously independent of comfort to an extraordinary degree. There is a Puritanical dislike of waste which is a very different thing, because it often coexists with an extreme attachment to the particular standard of comfort that the man himself prefers. I know people who believe that a substantial midday meal and a high tea are more righteous than a simple ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... plain petticoat, too, was embellished with paniers, and in spite of the heat of the day she wore a tippet edged with fur: both of which frivolous adornments had obviously stirred up the wrath of her more Puritanical neighbor. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... appears that Anthony Foster, instead of being a vulgar, low-bred, puritanical churl, was, in fact, a gentleman of birth and consideration, distinguished for his skill in the arts of music and horticulture, as also in languages. In so far, therefore, the Anthony Foster of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... to call forth such loyalty. They are a cold, unresponsive people, and the only systematic cruelty ever practiced against the colored folks by Americans has been by the New England slavers, sir. The slave trade has always been monopolized by the Northern folks in this country—by the puritanical New Englanders who used to sell the pickaninnies at so much a pound, as ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... worn-out classicism. It had not the frankly wicked recklessness of the French aristocracy between Lewis the Fourteenth and the Revolution, nor the changing contrasts of brutality, genius, affectation and Puritanical austerity which marked England's ascent, from the death of Edward the Sixth to the victories of Nelson and Wellington; still less had it any of those real motives for existence which carried Germany through ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... clergyman—a rector. Why, down at Apsley, the rector comes and dines—for the sake of God—and respectability—and brings his daughters, dressed in their Sunday best—with low-necked frocks that make no pretence to be puritanical. And you slave, day after day, because your father, through no fault of yours, happened to come down in the world, while they sit in a comfortable rectory accepting the invitations of the county. I wanted to give you things that 'ud ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... because it is the normal," answered MacIan. "Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... claim was unjustly rejected. The Salemers then, by the advice of their pastor, wrote to all the other churches in the Bay, and requested them to unite in a remonstrance to the government. This act was in perfect accordance with the spirit of the puritanical principles, which distinctly separated the church from the state; and it ought not, therefore, to have given offence to any one. But their practice differed greatly from their theory; and the feeling ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb |
