Quotes about Relationships
The only fruitful relation to human beings—particularly to the weak among them—is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one's own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in his image. I can never know beforehand how God's image should appear in others.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The wish to be independent in everything is false pride. Even what we owe to others belongs to ourselves and is a part of our own lives, and any attempt to calculate what we have 'earned' for ourselves and what we owe to other people is certainly not Christian, and is, moreover, a futile undertaking.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
But what is the finest book, or picture, or house, or estate, to me, compared to my wife, my parents, or my friend.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Love is not concerned with a person's accomplishments, it is a response to a person's being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.
— Dietrich von Hildebrand
When we love somebody, whether it be a friend, a parent, a child, whether it be conjugal love or neighborly love, the beloved person always stands before us as something precious and noble in himself.
— Dietrich von Hildebrand
A bird & a fish can fall in love, but where do they make a home?
— Dolly Parton