Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes (Part 2)

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory 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."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
　
"Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
　
"The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)
　
"How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Discipleship)
　
"Unless we have the courage to fight for a revival of wholesome reserve between man and man, we shall perish in an anarchy of human values… . Socially it means the renunciation of all place-hunting, a break with the cult of the "star," an open eye both upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
　
"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer


"The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world "
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther)."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes

"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." (The Cost of Discipleship)


"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." (The Cost of Discipleship)

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children."

"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."

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."

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

"A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol"

"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." (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him." (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ." (The Cost of Discipleship)

"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." (The Cost of Discipleship)

"time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable." (Letters and Papers from Prison)

"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."