„Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.“

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021.

H.L. Mencken281

American journalist and writer 1880 - 1956

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„The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.“

— Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States of America 1743 - 1826

See the Positive Atheism http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jeffphony.htm site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them were far more complex than is indicated in this statement.
Misattributed

God, People, Fools, Rage

„The sum of the whole matter is this — He who is one in will and heart with God is a Christian. He who loves God is one in will and heart with Him. He who trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in its means and working forces. That is Christianity in its starting-point and foundation.“

— Alexander Maclaren British minister 1826 - 1910

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.

Love, God, Heart, Christ

„One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.“

— Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher 1863 - 1902

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Truth

„God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him.“

— Ramakrishna Indian mystic and religious preacher 1836 - 1886

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 83

God, Feeling

„I have heard it said that a man caught between his wife and a Wise One often wishes for a dozen old enemies to fight instead. A man caught between a wife and three Wise Ones, and the wife a Wise One herself, must consider trying to slay Sightblinder.“

— Robert Jordan American writer 1948 - 2007

Aviendha
(15 October 1991)

Fight

„Our minds are artists,
always drawing lines.

Making decisions, differentiating
One thing from another,
Calling it something.

This is the way we know.
This is how we think.

We define
by drawing the line.“

— Alex Grey American artist 1953

Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line

Drawing, Thinking, Decision, Way

„How could one argue with a man who was always drawing lines and circles to explain the position; who, one day, drew a diagram [here Michael illustrated with pen and paper] saying 'take a point A, draw a straight line to point B, now three-fourths of the way up the line take a point C. The straight line AB is the road to the Republic; C is where we have got to along the road, we canot move any further along the straight road to our goal B; take a point out there, D [off the line AB]. Now if we bend the line a bit from C to D then we can bend it a little further, to another point E and if we can bend it to CE that will get us around Cathal Brugha which is what we want!“

— Michael Collins (Irish leader) Irish revolutionary leader 1890 - 1922

How could you talk to a man like that?
Referring to Eamon de Valera in conversation with Michael Hayes, at the debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921
Michael Hayes Papers, P53/299, UCDA
Quoted in Doherty, Gabriel and Keogh, Dermot (2006). Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State. Mercier Press, p. 153.

Way, Drawing

„There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.“

— Robert Frost American poet 1874 - 1963

Cooking

„O Christians! are you willing to walk the streets of heaven, and have no one greet you there? Would you be willing to go yourselves inside the gates and never have a soul to greet you and say, " I thank God for the kind words of sympathy and love you spoke on earth?"“

— Joseph Cummings

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.

Love, God, Soul

„The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man.“

— Aurelius Augustinus early Christian theologian and philosopher 354 - 430

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 414
Context: What is the Church? She is the body of Christ. Join to it the Head, and you have one man: The Head and the body make up one man. Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary. … And what is His body? It is His Spouse, that is, the Church.... The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man. All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of the Christians constitutes but one man. And this man is all men, all men are this man; for all are one, since Christ is one.

God, Christ

„Drawing is but a means to an end. One imagines that drawing can be beautiful-it is not the lines which are beautiful, but what they signify, the sentiments which they translate. In reality, there is no such thing as beauty in drawing, or color beauty lies alone in revelation of truth.“

— Auguste Rodin French sculptor 1840 - 1917

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Truth, Beauty, Color, Imagination

„Why should a Christian hesitate to kill a man that his God is waiting to damn? Why should a Christian pity an unbeliever—one who has rejected the Bible—when he knows that God will be pitiless forever?“

— Robert G. Ingersoll Union United States Army officer 1833 - 1899

Orthodoxy (1884)

God, Waiting

„Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.“

— George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States 1946

Radio Address (June 3, 2006); quoted in "Bush, senators renew fight against gay marriage" at CNN.com (June 5, 2006) http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/05/same.sex.marriage.ap/index.html
2000s, 2006

Love, Marriage, Children, Age

„At the words “his philosophy, my philosophy,” one is always reminded of that line in Nathan: … “What kind of God is it who belongs to a man?”“

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel German poet, critic and scholar 1772 - 1829

Bei den Ausdrücken, „Seine Philosophie”, „Meine Philosophie”, erinnert man sich immer an die Worte im Nathan: „Wem eignet Gott? Was ist das für ein Gott, der einem Menschen eignet?”
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 99, reference is to Lessing, Nathan der Weise

God

„If you cannot be great, be willing to serve God in that which is small. If you cannot do great things for Him, cheerfully do little ones. If you cannot be an Aaron to serve at the altar, or a Moses to guide the tribes, consent to be "a little maid" to Naaman the Syrian, for the honor of God's prophets, or a little child, for Christ's sake, to be set by Him in the midst of the people, as an illustration of the sweetness of humility.“

— Samuel Francis Smith Protestant Christian Minister Patriotic hymn writer 1808 - 1895

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.

God, People, Christ

„The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills.“

— Meister Eckhart German theologian 1260 - 1328

Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)
Context: The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills. If he were ill he would not wish to be well. If he really abides in God's will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him. He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free. If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

Sermon IV : True Hearing

God

„This drawing is three quarters ball, one quarter philosopher, which might be about the right space to keep a philosopher in his place.“

— Peter Greenaway British film director 1942

Flying Out of This World

Drawing

„For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one’s eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.“

— Sören Kierkegaard Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813 - 1855

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 1847 p. 197-198
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

God

„He who serves our Führer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.“

— Baldur von Schirach German Nazi leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial 1907 - 1974

Quoted in "Germany 1918-1945" - by J. A. Cloake - Germany - 1997

God

„Standing in the light till it's over, out of our minds
Someone had to draw a line
We'll be coming back for you one day
We'll be coming back for you one day“

— Example (musician) English rapper and singer 1982

"We'll be Coming Back" (song), with Calvin Harris
("We'll be Coming Back" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPC_evpbwDM
Studio albums, The Evolution of Man (2012)

Drawing, Light

„Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.“

H.L. Mencken281

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