when asked by his wife what a preacher's sermon had been about
John H. McKee, Coolidge: Wit and Wisdom, 1933
Author Nigel Rees claims this is apocryphal:
The taciturn President became famous for monosyllabic replies. A story from the twenties has Mrs. Coolidge asking him the subject of a sermon he had heard. "Sin," he answered. When prompted to elaborate on the clergyman's theme, Coolidge is said to have replied: "He was against it." Coolidge remarked that this story would have been funnier if it had been true.
Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century, page 67.
Misattributed
Quoted in Writers at Work 1st Series by Malcolm Cowley (1958)
about her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin Revealing The Life Of Irene Dunne, by Adele Whitely Fletcher; The Modern Screen (September 1933) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/modern-screen-september-1933/.
Interview in "Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt," 1994
Essays, The Triumph of Easter (1938)
Source: The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays
As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)
Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside of the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
“And what else did John have in mind but what is virtuous, so that he could not endure a wicked union even in the king's case, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her to wife." He could have been silent, had he not thought it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth for fear of death, or to make the prophetic office yield to the king, or to indulge in flattery. He knew well that he would die as he was against the king, but he preferred virtue to safety. Yet what is more expedient than the suffering which brought glory to the saint.”
Quid autem aliud Ioannes nisi honestatem consideravit? ut inhonestas nuptias etiam in rege non posset perpeti, dicens: Non licet tibi illam uxorem habere. Potuit tacere, nisi indecorum sibi iudicasset mortis metu verum non dicere, inclinare regi propheticam auctoritatem, adulationem subtexere. Sciebat utique moriturum se esse, quia regi adversabatur: sed honestatem saluti praetulit. Et tamen quid utilius quam quod passionis viro sancto advexit gloriam?
De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book III, chapter XIV, part 89 as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PII10-2.HTM
1 Corinthians 6:18
First Epistle to the Corinthians
From the intro to Track 15: "There is Power in a Union." Don't Mourn — Organize!: Songs of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (1990).
