Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which he entrusts to us.

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.

Pain is a holy angel who shows us treasures that would otherwise remain forever hidden; through him men and women have become greater than through all the joys of the world. It must be so and I tell myself this in my present situation over and over again. The pain of suffering and of longing, which can often be felt even physically, must be there, and we cannot and need not talk it away. But it needs to be overcome every time, and thus there is an even holier angel than the one of pain; that is, the one of joy in God.

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

Discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ.

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.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

The deceit, the lie of the devil consists of this, that he wishes to make man believe that he can live without God's Word. Thus he dangles before man's fantasy a kingdom of faith, of power, and of peace, into which only he can enter who consents to the temptations; and conceals from men that he, as the devil, is the most unfortunate and unhappy of beings, since he is finally and eternally rejected by God.

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

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.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.

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

Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.

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

The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.

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

I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our own wishes. As I see it, I'm here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it.

Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes.

It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich!

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.

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.

After he has been following Christ for a long time, the disciple of Jesus will be asked, \'Lacked ye anything?\' and he will answer \'Nothing, Lord.\' How could he when he knows that despite hunger and nakedness, persecution and danger, the Lord is always at his side?

But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you're afraid of erring, when others - I mean our brethren in Germany - must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.

grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.

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.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our important daily tasks, just as the priest-perhaps reading the Bible-passed by the man who had fallen among robbers. When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the Cross raised in our lives to show us that God's way, and not our own, is what counts.