24 Quotes About Puritanism

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

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.

Joy is more moral than every possible purification.

Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.

If you saw a wounded person, torn and mangled, on the highway, the sight of so deplorable an object would fill you with compassion; the sight of your friends under the disease I am now speaking ought to move you much more, for it is tearing them to pieces every moment. Every moment it preys upon their vitals, and they are continually dying, yet cannot die.

Radicalism is the party of the spirit whose ideas erect signposts to eternity and, in every situation, remind the conscience of the future. It scorns the conditioned and limited, small things and steps, restraint, discretion, and unconsciousness. It is joyful, but only towards what is great; it is reverent, but only towards what is powerful. It is pure and, therefore, self-righteous; principled and, therefore, repressive; fanatical and, therefore, destructive.

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.

Human beings discovered it long ago that the fastest and easiest way to become pure and holy is to become part of a group that distributes certificates of purity and holiness to its members.

The devil, cheated of his legitimate portion of human life, avenges itself by taking over all of life.