“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”

A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.

Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

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.

Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.

Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.

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

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.

There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.

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.

Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.

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

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.

The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.

I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.

As I look at our world Today, I am deeply impelled to Action. The “call” has spoken to me and I will humbly, gratefully and aggressively respond.⁣

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

It was my teacher’s genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful.

When people made up their minds that they wanted to be free and took action, then there was a change.