Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes
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Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.
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If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves.
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When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service.
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'Reformation theology' … pretends to prefer to Pharasaic ostentation a modest invisibility, which in practice means conformity to the world. When that happens, the hallmark of the Church becomes justitia civilis instead of extraordinary visibility. The very failure of the light to shine becomes the touchstone of our Christianity.
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The sword wherewith they judge their brethren will fall upon their own heads. Instead of cutting themselves off from the brother as the just from the unjust, they find themselves cut off from Jesus.
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The outcome of the Reformation was the victory, not of Luther's perception of grace in all its purity and costliness, but of the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.
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To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.
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By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.
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Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.
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Distant or near, in joy or in sorrow, each in the other sees his true helper to brotherly freedom.
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The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
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We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
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It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law.
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A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
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The activity will prove to be 'peculiar' by leading the active person into Christ's own passion. This activity itself is perpetual suffering and enduring. In it, Christ is suffered by his disciple. If this is not the case, it is not the activity Jesus intended. In this way, the 'extraordinary' is the fulfilling of the law, the keeping of the commandments.
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Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.
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It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.
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Politics are not the task of a Christian.
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In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility. For Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.
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By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love.
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It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
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That was the fatal mistake of the false Protestant ethic which diluted Christian love into patriotism, loyalty to friends, and industriousness, which in short, perverted the better righteousness into justitia civilis.
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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.
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Sickened by vermin that feed, in the shade of the good, on envy, greed, and suspicion, by the snake-like hissing of venomous tongues that fear hate and revile the mystery of free thought and upright heart The spirit would cast aside all deceit, open his heart to the spirit he trusts, and unite with him freely as one.