Quote

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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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Age: 39 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 4
Died: 1945
Died: April 8
Pastor
Philosopher
Poet
Resistance Fighter
Theologian
Breslau
Bonhoeffer
Light
Must
Omit
People
Empathy
Suffer
Regard
Suffering
Less
Learn

More quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.
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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Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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As brother stands by brother in distress, binding up his wounds and soothing his pain, so let us show our love towards our enemy. There is no deeper distress to be found in the world, no pain more bitter than our enemy's. Nowhere is service more necessary or more blessed than when we serve our enemies.
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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And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful” and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer