It is better to be quotable than to be honest.

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 The deceit, the lie of the devil consists of this, that he wishes to make man believe that he can live without God's Word. Thus he dangles before man's fantasy a kingdom of faith, of power, and of peace, into which only he can enter who consents to the temptations; and he conceals from men that he, as the devil, is the most unfortunate and unhappy of beings, since he is finally and eternally rejected by God.

In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower, The spectral Owl doth dwell; Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour, But at the dusk--he's abroad and well! Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him-- All mock him outright, by day: But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away! O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl, Then, then, is the reign of the Horned Owl!

Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.

There is no legitimacy on earth but in a government which is the choice of the nation.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

The more laws, the less justice.

Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

It is not what's right about war, it's about what's left.

Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself -- an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humbled?... Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?... We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit that we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.

Believe nothing and be on your guard against everything.

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?

The Boys and the Frogs Some boys, playing near a pond, saw a number of Frogs in the water and began to pelt them with stones. They killed several of them, when one of the Frogs, lifting his head out of the water, cried out: Pray stop, my boys: what is sport to you, is death to us.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

The wavering multitude is divided into opposite factions.

A rookie cop was asked the following question on an examination: "How would you go about dispersing a crowd?" He answered: "Take up an offering. That does it every time.".

A man is his own island.