Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. . . . Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. . . . Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity’s role in the secular world are widely known and influential. He was also known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, for which he spent time in a concentration camp and was eventually hanged.