Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the “religious.” The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk’s attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

252. “The cross is suffering with Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

254. “Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

255. “Come now, solemnest feast on the road to eternal freedom, Death, and destroy those fetters that bow, those walls that imprison this our transient life, these souls that linger in darkness, so that at last we see what is here withheld from our vision. Long did we seek you, freedom, in discipline, action and suffering. Now that we die, in the face of God himself we behold you.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

256. “The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

257. “To those who recognize in Jesus the wonder of the Son of God, every one of his words and deeds becomes a wonder; they find in him the last, most profound, most helpful counsel for all needs and questions. Yes, before the child can open his lips, he is full of wonder and full of counsel. Go to the child in the manger. Believe him to be the Son of God, and you will find in him wonder upon wonder, counsel upon counsel.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

258. “The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

259. “The justification of my life before God is to live because of and toward the living, dying, and rising of Jesus Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

260. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

261. “Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

262. “Is it not a miracle that where Jesus has really become Lord over people, peace reigns?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

263. “There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of the inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

264. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

265. “Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God- the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

266. “Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

267. “The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

268. “Easter? Our attention falls more on dying than on death. How we deal with dying is more important to us than how we conquer death. Socrates overcame dying; Christ overcame death.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

269. “We should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

270. “Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

271. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

272. “No, God and the world, God and its goods are incompatible, because the world and its goods make a bid for our hearts, and only when they have won them do they become what they really are. That is how they thrive, and that is why they are incompatible with allegiance to God. Our hearts have room only for one all-embracing devotion, and we can only cleave to one Lord.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

273. “It is the nature of strong people that they can bring out crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

274. “Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

275. “And so the unseen Lord of the eternal kingdom and of the church sends out ambassadors into this world, giving them a mission that is greater than that of any other, just as heaven is greater than earth, and eternity is greater than time. And the authority that this Lord gives these ambassadors is that much greater than all the authorities in this world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

276. “Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

277. “As far as infant baptism is concerned, it must be insisted that the sacrament should be administered only where there is a firm faith present which remembers Christ’s deed of salvation wrought for us once and for all. That can only happen in a living Christian community. To baptize infants without a Church is not only an abuse of the sacrament, it betokens a disgusting frivolity in dealing with the souls of the children themselves. For baptism can never be repeated.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

278. “If we have learned to be silent before the Word, we will also learn to manage our silence and our speech during the day.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

279. “In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a “worldly” into a “spiritual” “realm.” The practice of the Christian life can be learned only under these four mandates of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

280. “The cross of Christ is the death which we undergo once and for all in our baptism, and it is a death full of grace.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

281. “Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

282. “Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

283. “Jesus goes on before to Jerusalem and to the cross, and they are filled with fear and amazement at the road he calls them to follow.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

284. “There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

285. “The first moments of the new day are not the time for our own plans and worries, not even for our zeal to accomplish our own work, but for God’s liberating grace, God’s sanctifying presence.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

286. “Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

287. “Only what is essential must be said.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

288. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

289. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

290. “It seems to me more important actually to share someones distress than to use smooth words about it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

291. “No one can speak of the beginning but the one who was in the beginning. Thus the Bible begins with God’s free affirmation, free acknowledgment, free revelation of himself: In the beginning God created...”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

292. “Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

293. “Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

294. “It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

295. “Only because the message concerning Jesus Christ must still go forth and find believers, and because our task is not yet perfected, does God in His patience continue to sustain us with His good gifts.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

296. “We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

297. “It is a costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

298. “Prayer means nothing else but the readiness to appropriate the Word, and what is more, to let it speak to me in my personal situation, in my particular tasks, decisions, sins, and temptations.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

299. “The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord. God alone knows our good works; all we know is His good work.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

300. “Holy Scripture is more than a watchword. It is also more than ‘light for today’. It is God’s revealed Word for all men, for all times. Holy Scripture does not consist of individual passages; it is a unit and is intended to be used as such.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer