Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God has willed that we should seek and find God's living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings.

The responsible person seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.

Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.

Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

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.

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

In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.

The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.

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.

Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love.

It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song.

Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together.

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.

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.

Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love.

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

What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.

Only the believer obeys — obedience follows faith, the way good fruit comes from a good tree. Only the obedient believe.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

The cross is God's truth about us, and therefore it is the only power thatcanmakeustruthful.Whenwe know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.

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

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