Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Advent creates people, new people.

This is the end. For me the beginning of life.

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.

I wonder why it is that we find some days so much more oppressive than others, for no apparent reason. Is it growing pains – or spiritual trial? Once they’re over, the world looks quite a different place again.

While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.

Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

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