Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes:

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.

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.

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.

On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberg, when two soldiers came took him away. As he left, he said to another prisoner, This is the end - but for me, the beginning - of life. He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.

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

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.

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.

Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?

But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father.

There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ....No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology finds its beginnings in the miracle of miracles, that God became human.

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.

Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

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

Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.

If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible.

By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.

It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich!

It is a wicked sophistry to justify the worldliness of the Church by the cross of Christ.

The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands.

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.

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.

The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.

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?

It is not your love that sustains the marriage,but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

[God says] Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours.

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

Must the Christian go around looking for a cross to bear, seeking to suffer? No, insisted Bonhoeffer. Opportunities for bearing crosses will occur along life's way and all that is required is the willingness to act when the time comes. The needs of the neighbor, especially those of the weak and downtrodden, the victimized and the persecuted, the ill and the lonely, will become abundantly evident.

If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.

Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

Each morning is a new beginning of our life. Each day is a finished whole. The present day marks the boundary of our cares and concerns. It is long enough to find God or lose Him, to keep faith or fall into disgrace.

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.

Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial...C hristianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.

It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

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.

Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.

The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.

My past life is abundantly full of God's mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

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.

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

Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes.

Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering, and events; and we lay hold of a great hope.

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

The life of discipleship is not the hero-worship we would pay to a good master, but obedience to the Son of God.

...Gratitude transforms the torment of memory of good things now gone 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.

And if we ask how are we to know where our hearts are, the answer is just as simple - everything which hinders us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure, and the place where our heart is.

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of heaven, no one has heard about his realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existenceDeath is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone... Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.

The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out... The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity... out of the realm of the finite...into the realm of infinite possibilities.

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.

Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.

time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.

Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.

Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.

Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.

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

Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, l honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.

Man seeks, in his manhood, not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas, but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness and faithful in friendship, making man free.

What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.

Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.

The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.

It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

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.

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...

Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me.

The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.

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

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.

grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.

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.

By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt.

Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.

Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. ... We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.

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

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

May we be enabled to say "No" to sin and "Yes" to the sinner.

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

In other times it may have been the business of Christianity to champion the equality of all men; its business today will be to defend passionately human dignity and reserve.

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

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

Jesus does not impose intolerable restrictions on his disciples, he does not forbid them to look at anything, but bids them look on him. If they do that he knows that their gaze will always be pure, even when they look upon a woman.

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.

I am sure of God's hand and guidance... You must never doubt that I am thankful and glad to go the way which I am being led. My past life is abundantly full of God's mercy and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

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

In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.

The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus.

Seek God, not happiness - this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.

God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.

As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.

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.