Pilgrims Quotes

“I'm always disappointed when I see the word "Puritan" tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that Catholics are going to hell.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot h'ors d'ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”
― Paul Rudnick

“They call themselves believers and thereby signify that they are pilgrims, strangers and aliens in the world. Indeed, a staff in the hand does not identify a pilgrim as definitely as calling oneself a believer publicly testifies that one is on a journey, because faith simply means: What I am seeking is not here, and for that very reason I believe it. Faith expressly signifies the deep, strong, blessed restlessness that drives the believer so that he cannot settle down at rest in this world, and therefore the person who has settled down completely at rest has also ceased to be a believer, because a believer cannot sit still as one sits with a pilgrim's staff in one's hand – a believer travels forward”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that wretched female skeleton, liquefying in the midst of its lace and its millions.”
― Émile Zola, Lourdes

“I believe each of us is a pilgrim in our own way; we are all lost souls, trying to find our way home.”
― Seth Adam Smith, Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern

“Pilgrims, digging in shifts, dig till midnight in mining pits, chipping flint with picks, drilling schist with drills, striking it rich mining zinc. Irish firms, hiring micks whilst firing Brits, bring in smiths with mining skills: kilnwrights grilling brick in brickkilns, millwrights grinding grist in gristmills. Irish tinsmiths, fiddling with widgits, fix this rig, driving its drills which spin whirring drillbits.”
― Christian Bök, Eunoia

“The Mayflower sped across the white-tipped waves once the voyage was under way, and the passengers were quickly afflicted with seasickness. The crew took great delight in the sufferings of the landlubbers and tormented them mercilessly. "There is an insolent and very profane young man, Bradford wrote, "who was always harrassing the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with greivous execrations." He even laughed that he hoped to 'throw half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.'
The Puritans believe a just God punished the young sailor for his cruelty when, halfway through the voyage, 'it pleased God...to smite the young man with a greivous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner." He was the first to be thrown overboard.”
― Tony Williams, The Pox and the Covenant: Mather, Franklin, and the Epidemic That Changed America's Destiny

“They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants - the types of people who had founded Jamestown in Virginia - these were, for the most part, families - men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship as they pleased.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick

“Pilgrims

Tuscan reds and ochre hues
Olive greens and skies of blue
Sunlit valleys full of charm
Secluded homestead and hilltop farm

Over hills skim birds in flight
Aromas whet the appetite
Autumn rustle fills the air
Revealing grace of trees laid bare

Pathways meander through the vale
Inviting travelers its height to scale
Sunset rewards as evening ends
And pilgrims to the night descend”
― Collette O'Mahony, The Soul in Words: A collection of Poetry & Verse

“One eye-witness reported that:
'...it seems more like the celebration of the orgies of Bacchus, than the memory of a pious saint, from the drunken quarrels and obscenities practised on these occasions. So little is there of devotion, or amendment of life or manners, that these places are frequently chosen for the scenes of pitched battles, fought with cudgels, by parties, not only of parishes, but of counties, set in formal array against each other, to revenge some real or supposed injury, and murders are not an unusual result of these meetings.

It is hard to believe that many of those who took part in the fighting had originally gone in a spirit of pilgrimage to a holy well. But very often the two went together, at least in Ireland, and a seriously intended pilgrimage was often followed by boisterous and aggressive behaviour. Dr. Patrick Logan, who has made a modern study of Irish pilgrimages, commented: 'Pilgrims in any age are not noted for their piety, the Canterbury Tales make that clear, but anyone who has ever gone on a pilgrimage knows it is a memorable and enjoyable experience, something which is part of the nature of man. These days pilgrims may be called tourists.”
― Colin Bord, Sacred Waters

“The Stoic’s path includes walking against the gusts of a tempest, unswayed and unbroken. As pilgrims in this world, we are not immune to the winds. Yet, we may choose to remain unwavering, bearing the brunt of the gusts with equanimity.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The Power of the Present: A Stoic's Guide to Unyielding Focus

“Inexperienced in agriculture, the Pilgrims were also not woodspeople; indeed, they were so incurious about their environment that Bradford felt obliged to comment in his journal when Francis Billington . . . climbed to the top of a tall tree to look around. As Thoreau noted with disgust, the colonists landed at Plymouth on December 16, but it was not until January 8 that one of them went as far away as two miles--and even then the traveler was, again, Francis Billington.”
― Charles C. Mann

“The Pilgrims believed beer was an unalloyed good, a 'good creature of God.' People who did not drink were suspect and 'crank-brained.”
― Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

“Did you know that honey bees came over with the Pilgrims? They are not recognized as citizens but corporations are!”
― June Stoyer

“The gospel call invites us to apprentice ourselves to Jesus, become pilgrims along the compassionate way, and journey deeper together into the heart and life of God. In our contemporary setting, however, Christians often look more like bustling tourists than faithful pilgrims patiently engaged upon an eternal pilgrimage into Divine Love. Countless people today make periodic excursions into the spiritual supermarket in pursuit of a novel offer, but few seem willing to sign up as pilgrims in the lifelong adventure of discipleship.”
― Trevor Hudson, A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion

“If we are true believers, though we ourselves
should sometimes forget, the world will not fail to remind us of the difference between it and us. And, on the other hand, if we at any time feel perfectly at home in the world, if our consciousness of its necessary antagonism to us is entirely in abeyance, then there is abundant reason for us to examine ourselves. And the probability is that we have been backward in cultivating our hope upon God and the world to come.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“Pilgrims and Nazis (Sonnet 2220)

The terrorists you call pilgrims,
did not immigrate, they invaded,
pillaged and plundered a continent,
they even plagiarized its name into
a symbol of atrocity and violation,

just like the nazis heisted
a holy symbol from the east,
and turned the sacred Swastika
into the global icon of hate.

History books are all messed up,
none teaches the history of humans -
world history was written by animals,
to maintain their narrative unchallenged.

The West broke the world, now
the human race gotta resurrect the world,
offspring of the terrorists and terrorized alike -
but we can do nothing at all,
till we decolonize our mind.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper