Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “There is no kindness more cruel than the kindness which consigns another person to their sin.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

202. “When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God’s mercy and love.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

204. “Most people have forgotten nowadays what a house can mean, though some of us have come to realize it as never before. It is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life’s storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

205. “The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

206. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

207. “Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting – that is, of hopefully doing without – will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

208. “Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

209. “Perception, knowledge, and truth without love are nothing. They are not truth, for truth is God, and God is love. Therefore, truth without love is a lie.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

210. “Bonhoeffer was firmly and rightly convinced that it is not only a Christian right but a Christian duty towards God to oppose tyranny, that is, a government which is no longer based on natural law and the law of God. For Bonhoeffer this followed from the fact that the Church as a living force in this world entirely depends on her this-sidedness.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

212. “The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

213. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

214. “So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

215. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

216. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

217. “Christ is not gloriously transported from earth into heaven. He must instead go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near. Precisely here, where all lose faith in God, where all despair about the power of God, God is fully there, and Christ is alive and near.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

218. “There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man. Untruthfulness destroys fellowship, but truth cuts false fellowship to pieces and establishes genuine brotherhood.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

219. “The wasted time we are ashamed of, the temptations we succumb to, the weakness and discouragement in our work, the disorder and lack of discipline in our thinking and in our dealings with other people – all these very frequently have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

220. “Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbour or not. We must get into action and obey – we must behave like a neighbour to him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

221. “Often we are so burdened and overwhelmed with other thoughts, images, and concerns that it may take a long time before God’s Word has cleared all that away and gets through to us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

222. “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

223. “There is no worse sin than unbelief toward the gospel.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

224. “Ultimately all authority on earth must serve only the authority of Jesus Christ over humankind.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

226. “Our salvation is ‘external to ourselves’. I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. Only he who allows himself to be found in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his Cross, and his resurrection, is with God and God with him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

227. “In religion, as in art and science, there are – in addition to times of great excitement – times of sober work and practice. Interaction with God must be practiced; otherwise we will not find the right tone, the right word, the right language, when he surprises us. We must learn God’s language, laboriously learn it. And we must work at it, so that we will be able to talk with him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

228. “To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and be ready to obey.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

229. “That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord. Peter’s protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer, and that means that Satan has gained entry into the Church, and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

230. “God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

231. “The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

232. “It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

233. “Ascension joy – inwardly we must become very quiet to hear the soft sound of this phrase at all. Joy lives in its quietness and incomprehensibility. This joy is in fact incomprehensible, for the comprehensible never makes for joy.1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

234. “Those who have found God in the cross of Jesus Christ know how wonderfully God hides himself in this world and how he is closest precisely when we believe him to be most distant.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

235. “According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road – only obedience to the call of Jesus.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

236. “Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness... those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misuing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear... it is precisely such misuse of community that creates deadly isolation of human beings.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

237. “So the call to discipleship is a commitment solely to the person of Jesus Christ, a breaking through of all legalisms by the grace of him who calls.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

238. “Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

239. “God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. God makes us happy, as only children can be happy.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

240. “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. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

241. “Only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means – even criminal – to force the victory of their cause.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

242. “As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

243. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a great realist. He was one of the few who quickly understood, even before Hitler came to power, that National Socialism was a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

244. “Those who seek their own honor are no longer seeking God and their neighbor.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

245. “And take up their cross.” That cross is already there, ready, from the very beginning; we need only take it up. But to keep us from believing that we must simply choose any arbitrary cross, or simply pick out our suffering as we will, Jesus emphasizes that each of us has his or her own cross, ready, appointed, and appropriately measured by God.1.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

246. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

247. “It is becoming clearer every day that the most urgent problem besetting our Church is this: How can we live the Christian life in the modern world?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

248. “Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

249. “When a preacher opens the Bible and interprets the word of God, a mystery takes place, a miracle: the grace of God, who comes down from heaven into our midst and speaks to us, knocks on our door, asks questions, warns us, puts pressure on us, alarms us, threatens us, and makes us joyful again and free and sure.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

250. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer