The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFERIf you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.
More Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes
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We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.
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Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?
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Time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.
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The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.
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The task of pastoral ministry, above all else, is to arrange contingencies for an encounter with the divine.
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The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.
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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?
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Not to speak is to speak.
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We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.
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Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
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A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
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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.
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Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.
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Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends.
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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.
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My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.
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The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.
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A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
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I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.
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The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.
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Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.
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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.
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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.
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Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.
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God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.
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Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER