Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/29333.Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

"Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities,
and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of
forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline,
Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace
without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the
spirit with every available weapon against the flesh."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice,
we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and
more in the light of what they suffer."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by
living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean
living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we
throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own
sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other
direction."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life
cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of
our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ."

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler."

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one
of them turned to him."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to
perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the
wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he
will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently
trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depths of things. And so the
wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always
without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the
factual is wisdom."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human
fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame
each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but
accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of
your hearts…"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)
"time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and
that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less
of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus.
The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing:
what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it
does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is
destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian
knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence
of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my
heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I
come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and
yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The
brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus
Christ."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)

"The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is
possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it
then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The
theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real
overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation
of the fallen world "
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"I'm still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this
world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems,
successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves
completely into the arms of God."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"Unless we have the courage to fight for a revival of wholesome reserve between man
and man, we shall perish in an anarchy of human values… . Socially it means the
renunciation of all place-hunting, a break with the cult of the “star,” an open eye both
upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and
pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a
return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to
unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection,
from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms;
we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us
suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have
worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is
not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and
straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our
honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity
and straightforwardness?"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly
grace."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at
some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Discipleship)

"There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should
not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds
very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the
emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it.
It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more
leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic
relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more
difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy.
One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within,
a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's
presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact
more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's Son Jesus Christ, than
to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more
important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from
the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of
judgment"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible)

"While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us,
God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real
human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble
and base, God loves real people without distinction. "
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His
Letters, Writings, and Sermons)

"Grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help
nor freedom."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great
things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm
in their life’s journey…"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"As God adds his ‘Yes’ to your ‘Yes,’ as he confirms your will with his will, and as he
allows you, and approves of, your triumph and rejoicing and pride, he makes you at the
same time instruments of his will and purpose both for yourselves and for others. In his
unfathomable condescension God does add his ‘Yes’ to yours; but by doing so, he
creates out of your love something quite new – the holy estate of matrimony…"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift
which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly
because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It
is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only
true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: 'Ye were bought at a price',
and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God
did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.
Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
"It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs
to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man
himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body
and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is
completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"Just as Christians should not be constantly feeling the pulse of their spiritual life, so too
the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be continually taking
its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more
assuredly and consistently will community increase and grow from day to day as God
pleases"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible)

"Will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be
incomparably wholesome for me because it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us
can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that
really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? The bright day of
Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are
lifting"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible)

"Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion...but he set in its place
the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, 'Take it or leave it': Virgin Birth,
Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally significant and necessary part of
the whole, which latter has to be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That is not in
accordance with the Bible. There are degrees of perception and degrees of significance,
i.e. a secret discipline must be re-established whereby the mysteries of the Christian
faith are preserved from profanation."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings
as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their
opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real
human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His
Letters, Writings, and Sermons)

"Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in
the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in
the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life
is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know
them"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)
"We ought not to be in too much of a hurry here to speak piously of God’s will and
guidance. It is obvious, and it should not be ignored, that it is your own very human
wills that are at work here, celebrating their triumph; the course that you are taking at
the outset is one that you have chosen for yourselves…"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him.
Only in relationship with the other am I free"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or
religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems
actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of
others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance,
become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an
overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment,
and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him.
On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause
he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not
in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his
work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer
this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit
among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you
blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would
ever have been spared' (Luther)."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)

"The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the
following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the
specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician,
even the artist..."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Den größten Fehler, den man im Leben machen kann, ist, immer Angst zu haben,
einen Fehler zu machen."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer