It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God's Word ('Give all your goods to the poor.' 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left.' 'If anyone takes your coat, let him have your cloak also. Rejoice always.' 'Count it sheer joy when you meet various temptations' etc.). The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God's requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow, one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool. But you are a long way from marriage.

It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.