When you're grieving that's not the time to be brave or strong, you need to let it show

I honor my grief. I try to be kinder to myself. I give myself time to move through and to process whatever is making me sad.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Man is the only animal who blushes...or needs to.

And such a luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred for such contact...

The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.

For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

An act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all.

In one conversation that September in Geneva, Visser 't Hooft asked Bonhoeffer what he prayed for. "If you want to know the truth," Bonhoeffer replied, "I pray for the defeat of my nation. For I believe that is the only way to pay for all the suffering which my country has caused in the world.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness - the sense that is where we really belong.

You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can't steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn't Christian, self-sacrifice isn't Christian, charity isn't, remorse isn't. I expect the cavemen wept to see another's tears.

Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony.