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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.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Age: 39 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 4
Died: 1945
Died: April 8
Pastor
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Breslau
Bonhoeffer
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Optimistic

More quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. … So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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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
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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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The Psalter is the great school of prayer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out... The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity... out of the realm of the finite...into the realm of infinite possibilities.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Certainly one must try everything, but only to become more certain what God's way is.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now, God is speaking with me
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer