Top 100 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes
#1. If there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God's will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#2. The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after One's bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christians.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#4. The biggest mistake you can make in your life is to be always afraid of making a mistake.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#5. Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#6. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#7. Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial ... C hristianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#8. When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#9. How impossible, how utterly absurd it would be for the disciples
these disciples, such men as these!
to try and become the light of the world! No, they are already the light, and the call has made them so.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#10. Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#11. If any want to become my followers," Jesus says. Following him is not something that is self-evident, even among the disciples. No one can be forced, no one can be expected to follow him ... "If any want to follow me, they must deny themselves ... and take up their cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#12. Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love, and it would be wrong to try to find anything ... It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; he does not fill it, but keeps it empty so that our communion with another may be kept alive, even at the cost of pain.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#13. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#14. Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#15. Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#18. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#20. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#21. Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#22. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#23. A shaking of heads, perhaps even an evil laugh, must go through our old, smart, experienced, self-assured world, when it hears the call of salvation of believing Christians: "For a child has been born for us, a son given to us."5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#24. Jesus is no draughtsman of political blueprints, he is the one who vanquished evil through suffering. It looked as though evil had triumphed on the cross, but the real victory belonged to
Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#25. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#26. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#27. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#28. Only those who place tomorrow in God's hands and receive what they need to live today are truly secure. Receiving daily liberates us from tomorrow. Thought for tomorrow delivers us up to endless worry.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#29. [in] the whole of world history there is always only one really significant hour
the present ... [I]f you want to find eternity, you must serve the times.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#30. 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
#31. In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism[28] as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.[
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#32. The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying the words of the Psalms with all its strength.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#33. The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#34. Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#36. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#37. Easter is not about immortality but about resurrection from a death that is a real death with all its frightfulness and horrors, resurrection from a death of the body and the soul, of the whole person, resurrection by the power of God's mighty act. This is the Easter message.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#38. It is solely the form of Christ that matters, not any form besides Christ's own. The church is the human being who has become human, has been judged, and has been awakened to new life in Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#39. 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
#41. O Lord, give all of us new hearts, open and obedient to you: hearts that love our neighbor and pray to you for our church. Lord, give us a good beginning; open your fatherly heart to us and lead us, one day, home to your kingdom of eternal reconciliation, through Christ the Lord! Amen.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#42. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#43. Grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#44. The brother is a burden to the Christian, precisely because he is a Christian. For the pagan the other person never becomes a burden at all. He simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#46. The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#47. Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#49. God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#50. To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God's hand alone, we shall be protected even in the greatest danger; and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#52. The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the sermon on the mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#53. Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#54. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#55. What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#56. Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let's see something to prove it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#57. The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#58. If you want my goodness to stay with you then serve your neighbor, for that is where God comes to you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#59. Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#64. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#65. God's word to me - new every day - in the infinite riches of interpretation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#67. Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at his origin and has made himself his own creator and judge.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#68. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#69. In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#70. 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
#71. The most astonishing observation one makes today is that people surrender everything in the face of nothingness: their own judgment, their humanity, their neighbors. Where this fear is exploited without scruple, there are no limits to what can be achieved.[130]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#72. 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
#73. It is not surprising, of course, that those who attempt to discredit the evidence of Scripture are the people who themselves do not seriously read, know, or make a thorough study of the Scriptures.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#74. 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
#75. It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#76. Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#77. The future of modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of Man and true freedom and to keep the Law of God, even of it means martyrdom or death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#78. What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on what happens inside a person. I am grateful for every day and that makes me happy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#79. He who fears the face of God does not fear the face of man. He who fears the face of man does not fear the face of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#80. Consequently there is a need for spiritual vitality. What protection is there against the danger of organisation? Man is once more faced with the problem of himself. He can cope with every danger except the danger of human nature itself. In the last resort it all turns upon man.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#81. Jesus is Lord of the ages and is always with his own, even when things are difficult, and will abide with us; that is our comfort. If tribulation and anxiety come upon us, Jesus is with us and leads us over into God's eternal kingdom.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#82. I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven (12 August 1943).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#83. After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#84. Those who are still afraid of men have no fear of God, and those who have fear of God have ceased to be afraid of men. All preachers of the gospel will do well to recollect this saying daily.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#85. May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#86. it's harder for us to find what we are looking for and must do without, since we have come to expect more from friendship than most other people do. In this respect as well, it's not so easy to make do with "substitutes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#87. Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#88. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#89. We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems, but in those we have already solved.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#90. Whoever despises another human being will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing of what we despise in another is itself foreign to us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#91. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#92. 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
#93. 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#94. 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
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#96. The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#97. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#99. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#100. As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
