“It’s a queer feeling to be so utterly dependent on the help of others, but at least it teaches one to be grateful, a lesson I hope I shall never forget. In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison, from a letter dated “September 13, 1943” ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (Macmillan, 1953).