Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes - Page 7

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Ultimate seriousness in not without a dose of humor.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Theologian, Seriousness, Dose

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Faith, Believe, Obedience

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We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Spiritual, Sleep, Should Have

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Clyde E. Fant (1975). “Bonhoeffer: worldly preaching”

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Clever, Men, Needs

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011). “Letters Papers from Prison”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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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?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Humility, Way, Sin

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Samuel Wells (2015). “Life Together”, p.74, SCM Press

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Every word of Holy Scripture was a love letter from God directed very personally to us and he asked us whether we loved Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus, Letters, Scripture

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In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mean, Ideas, Done

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Gratitude, Achievement, Easy

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011). “Letters Papers from Prison”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Happy Life, Men, Christ

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2015). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.44, SCM Press

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If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Prayer, Heart, Important

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It is the task of youth not to reshape the church, but rather to listen to the word of God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Church, Tasks, Youth

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It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian, Law, Doe

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Samuel Wells (2015). “Life Together”, p.78, SCM Press

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Who am I? this or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army fleeing
in disorder from a victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lonely, Hypocrite, Army

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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Because I am a Christian, therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God's Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scriptures in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian, Moving, Meditation

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, David McI. Gracie (2000). “Meditating on the Word”, p.22, Rowman & Littlefield

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The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Men, Following Christ, Grace

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Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Community, Christian Community

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How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. . . . We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved. . . . God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized as the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God, Use, Want

Letters and papers from Prison, p. 311, 1996.

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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Geffrey B. Kelly (1990). “A testament to freedom: the essential writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, Harpercollins

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There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Peace, Eye, Perspective

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1998). “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Writings”

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If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses . . . only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Men, Discipline, Soul

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1983). “The martyred Christian: 160 readings from Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, Scribner

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It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.
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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.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian, Jesus, Taken

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Samuel Wells (2015). “Life Together”, p.7, SCM Press

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Telling the truth ... is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Appreciation, Truth, Real

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “Ethics”, p.359, Simon and Schuster

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The church is her true self only when she exists for humanity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian, Self, Humanity

"Letters and Papers from Prison".

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As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Long, Armor, Looks

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A Christian is someone who shares the sufferings of God in the world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian, Suffering, World

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Born: February 4, 1906
Died: April 9, 1945
Occupation: Pastor
Cite this Page: Citation

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