“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.”

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.

Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.

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.

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.

May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.

Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.

If 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.

Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.

Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

One act of obedience is worth a hundred sermons.

A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.

[Christ] is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.

We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.

Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.

I used to live an isolated existence, even in relationships, but now my family knows me for who I really am. Mostly, that’s a good thing.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.

Free will exist only in a confused mind.

God didn’t say, ‘Be still and feel that I am God,’ He said, ‘Be still and know’.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

Love is the dignity of existence, the harmony of life.