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Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.

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
Poverty
Cling
Duty
Richer
Ought
Closely
Present
Prevent
Hand
Desires
Desire
Easily
Hands
Lack
Mastered
Make
Sake
Repeatedly

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Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let’s see something to prove it.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
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A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
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Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.
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Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
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Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
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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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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.
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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.
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Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
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Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.
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If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
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Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.
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Certainly one must try everything, but only to become more certain what God's way is.
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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.
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Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.
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God turns toward the very places from which humans turn away.
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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.
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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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