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Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.

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
Dash
Seriousness
Absolutes
Absolute
Humor
Without
Never

More quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself - a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man,...and throws himself into the arms of God...then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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In Jesus, the service of God and the service of the least of the brethren were one.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Advent creates people, new people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God's hand alone, we shall be protected even in the greatest danger and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call
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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It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together.
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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In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
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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It seems to me more important actually to share someones distress than to use smooth words about it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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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Thinking in terms of two realms understands the paired concepts worldy-Christia n, natural-superna tural, profane-sacred, rational-revela tions, as ultimate static opposites...and fails to recognize the original unity of these opposites in the Christ-reality.
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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All are called to be what in the reality of God they are already.
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