Dorothy Day Quotes & Sayings

We should live in such a way that our lives wouldn't make much sense if the gospel were not true. — Dorothy Day

We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.
We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form saying, "We need bread." ... If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread.
We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls were expanded.
We were just sitting there talking and someone said, "Let's all go live on a farm."
It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened. — Dorothy Day

I believe that we must reach our brother, never toning down our fundamental oppositions, but meeting him when he asks to be met, with a reason for the faith that is in us, as well as with a loving sympathy for them as brothers. — Dorothy Day

We want no revolution; we want the brotherhood of men. We want men to love one another. We want all men to have what is sufficient for their needs. And now - strange thought - the devil has so maneuvered that the people turn from Him because those who profess Him are clothed in soft raiment and sit at well-spread tables and deny the poor. — Dorothy Day

We are not, most of us, capable of exalted emotion, save rarely. — Dorothy Day

A philosophy of work is essential if we would be whole men, holy men, healthy men, joyous men. A certain amount of goods is necessary for a man to lead a good life, and we have to make that kind of society where it is easier for men to be good. — Dorothy Day

The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war. — Dorothy Day

The final word is love. — Dorothy Day

When it comes down to it, even on the natural plane, it is much happier and more enlivening to love than to be loved. — Dorothy Day

To try to stop war by placing before men's eyes the terrible suffering involved will never succeed, because men are willing (in their thoughts and imaginations at least) to face any kind of suffering when motivated by noble aims like the vague and tremendous concept of freedom ... Or, in their humility (or sloth - who knows?) men are quite willing to leave decisions to others 'who know more about it than we do. — Dorothy Day

When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me. — Dorothy Day

The best things to do with the best things in life is to give them away. — Dorothy Day

When it comes to labor and politics, I am inclined to be sympathetic
to the left, but when it comes to the Catholic Church, then I am far to
the right. — Dorothy Day

Advent is a time of waiting, of expectation, of silence. Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman is so happy, so content. She lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were listening to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears that stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness which which one awaits such stirring is like nothing so much as a blanket of silence. — Dorothy Day

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming. — Dorothy Day

When we have spiritual reading at meals, when we have the rosary at night, when we have study groups, forums, when we go out to distribute literature at meetings, or sell it on the street corners, Christ is there with us. — Dorothy Day

Recording happiness made it last longer, we felt, and recording sorrow dramatized it and took away its bitterness; and often we settled some problem which beset us even while we wrote about it. — Dorothy Day

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. — Dorothy Day

One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. — Dorothy Day

And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. A child is not enough. A husband and children, no matter how busy one may be kept by them, are not enough. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness. — Dorothy Day

We have all probably noted those sudden moments of quiet - those strange and almost miraculous moments in the life of a big city when there is a cessation of traffic noise - just an instant when there is only the sound of footsteps which serves to emphasize a sudden peace. During those seconds it is possible to notice the sunlight, to notice our fellow humans, to take breath. — Dorothy Day

How much did I hear of religion as a child? Very little, and yet my heart leaped when I heard the name of God. I do believe every soul has a tendency toward God. — Dorothy Day

The world was in terrible shape, and I'm glad we stood up and said what we believed; but a lot of the time we'd say these beautiful things about justice and fairness and equality, but we weren't so nice to each other. We'd be jealous and we'd gossip, and we'd be moody and difficult and rude and inconsiderate. Why do I say 'we'? I mean I would be all that
and if at the time I ever came near to knowing what I'd become, I'd dodge, I'd duck, I'd go on the offensive: the terrible Wall Street bankers. Lots of them were terrible
and so were lots of us. — Dorothy Day

We are all called to be saints, St. Paul says, and we might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name. We might also get used to recognizing the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us. — Dorothy Day

The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love. — Dorothy Day

What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? — Dorothy Day

Your love for God is only as great as the love you have for the person you love the least. — Dorothy Day

Love is an exchange of gifts,' Saint Ignatius had said. It was in these simple, practical, down-to-earth ways that people could show their love for each other. If the love was not there in the beginning, but only the need, such gifts made love grow. — Dorothy Day

With prayer, one can go on cheerfully and even happily. Without prayer, how grim a journey! — Dorothy Day

We suffer these things and they fade form memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to to others - these are hard, hard things; and I don't think they ever get any easier.

You can strip yourself, you can be stripped, but still you will reach out like an octopus to seek your own comfort, your untroubled time, your ease, your refreshment. It may mean books or music - the gratification of the inner sense - or it may mean food and drink, coffee and cigarettes. The one kind of giving up is no easier than the other. — Dorothy Day

I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. — Dorothy Day

We're living in an age of genocide ... And we do believe that there is not only the genocide of war, and the genocide that took place with the extermination of the Jews, but the whole program ... of birth control and abortion is another form of genocide ... [T]hey claim the poor are bringing forth tremendous numbers of children and so the solution is to kill them off. — Dorothy Day

I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor. — Dorothy Day

The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. — Dorothy Day

My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with. — Dorothy Day

we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. — Dorothy Day

Idealism in the young, I guess I'm saying, is curiosity as well as goodness trying to express itself. — Dorothy Day

The work is more important than the talking and the writing about the work. — Dorothy Day

I too complain ceaselessly in my heart and in my words too. My very life is a protest. Against government, for instance. — Dorothy Day

The Sexual Revolution is a complete rebellion against authority, natural and supernatural, even against the body and its needs, its natural functions of child bearing. This is not reverence for life, it is a great denial and more resembles Nihilism than the revolution that they think they are furthering. — Dorothy Day

Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; "jubilant" the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese. — Dorothy Day

We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice. — Dorothy Day

Too much praise makes you feel you must be doing something terribly wrong. — Dorothy Day

You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right. — Dorothy Day

I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky ... by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man. — Dorothy Day

When they call you a saint, it means basically that you are not to be taken seriously. — Dorothy Day

Common sense in religion is rare, and we are too often trying to be heroic instead of just ordinarily good and kind. — Dorothy Day

There was no attack on religion because people were generally indifferent to religion. They were neither hot nor cold. They were the tepid, the materialistic, who hoped that by Sunday churchgoing they would be taking care of the afterlife, if there were an afterlife. Meanwhile they would get everything they could in this. — Dorothy Day

Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action. — Dorothy Day

When we are asked to show our love for God, our desire for him, when he asks us as Jesus asked Peter, 'Lovest thou me?' we have to give proof of it. 'Lovest thou me more than these, more than any human companionship, more than any human love?' It is not filth and ugliness, drugs and drink and perversion he is asking us to prefer him to. He is asking us to prefer him to all beauty and loveliness. To all other love. He is giving us a chance to prove our faith, our hope, our charity. It is as hard and painful as Abraham's ordeal, when he thought he was asked to perform a human sacrifice and immolate his son. — Dorothy Day

Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you. — Dorothy Day

Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed. — Dorothy Day

Freedom has its roots in religion ... — Dorothy Day

If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other's faults and burdens. — Dorothy Day

We certainly can try to grow in love, and it is good practice, this giving what we've got, whether it is a cup of coffee or money to pay the grocery bill. — Dorothy Day

A custom existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning. In every house then a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called "the stranger's room." Not because these people thought they could trace something of someone they loved in the stranger who used it, not because the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because - plain and simple and stupendous fact - he or she was Christ. — Dorothy Day

Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily. — Dorothy Day

The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor. — Dorothy Day

Of all the charges made against the Communists these days of congressional investigations, the charge of loose morals is seldom heard, so very loose have become those of "Christian" people. — Dorothy Day

Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man's greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war? — Dorothy Day

First of all, let it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy. — Dorothy Day

God meant for things to be much easier than we have made them — Dorothy Day

We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists 'of conspiring to teach [us] to do,' but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York. — Dorothy Day

Our rule is the works of mercy ... It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence. — Dorothy Day

As we come to know the seriousness of the situation, the war, the racism, the poverty in our world, we come to realize that things will not be changed simply by words or demonstrations. Rather, it's a question of living one's life in a drastically different way. — Dorothy Day

Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul. — Dorothy Day

We must recognize the fact that many Nazis, Marxists and Fascists believe passionately in their fundamental rightness, and allow nothing to hinder them from their goal in the pursuit of their mission. — Dorothy Day

The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose. — Dorothy Day

The biggest mistake sometimes is to play things very safe in this life and end up being moral failures. — Dorothy Day

It is penance to work, to give oneself to others, to endure the pinpricks of community living. — Dorothy Day

Maybe I was praying for him then, in my own way. Does God have a set way of prayer, a way that He expects each of us to follow? I doubt it. I believe some people
lots of people
pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer? — Dorothy Day

I cannot worry much about your sins and miseries when I have so many of my own. I can only love you all, poor fellow travelers, fellow sufferers. I do not want to add one least straw to the burden you already carry. My prayer from day to day is that God will so enlarge my heart that I will see you all, and live with you all, in His love. — Dorothy Day

When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it. There can never be enough thinking about it. — Dorothy Day

I can write no other than this: unless we use the weapons of the spirit, denying ourselves and taking up our cross and following Jesus, dying with Him and rising with Him, men will go on fighting, and often from the highest motives, believing that they are fighting defensive wars for justice and in self-defense against present or future aggression. — Dorothy Day

Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm. — Dorothy Day

To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them! — Dorothy Day

Two years ago, I was saying as I planted seeds in the garden, "I must believe in these seeds, that they fall into the earth and grow into flowers and radishes and beans." It is a miracle to me because I do not understand it. The very fact that they use glib technical phrases does not make it any less a miracle, and a miracle we all accept. Then why not accept God's miracles? — Dorothy Day

A conversion is a lonely experience. — Dorothy Day

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one's fellows, their responsibilitie s as children of God, heirs of heaven. — Dorothy Day

It is easier to have faith that God will support each House of Hospitality and Farming Commune and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us - to see Christ in him. — Dorothy Day

To pay no attention to health of body but only that of soul. To plan day on arising and evening examination of conscience. More spiritual reading ... To waste no time. More conscientious about letters, visits, about these records. More charity. — Dorothy Day

You see I'm such a fool that I'm never afraid of appearing foolish. — Dorothy Day

Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth. — Dorothy Day

"How can you see Christ in people?" And we only say: It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope, that we can awaken these same acts in their hearts, too, with the help of God ... — Dorothy Day

For me Christ was not to be bought for thirty pieces of silver but with my heart's blood. We buy not cheap in this market. — Dorothy Day

I don't think God is so jealous about our worship of Him that He will want to separate those who serve His purposes, serve His goodness, because they have read a book, even one written by an atheist, and have been moved, or because they have wanted to be fair all their lives, but have never stepped in a church, from those who have heard God's words in church or read His words in the Bible and become convinced by them. — Dorothy Day

There is plenty to do, for each one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, in our own neighborhoods. — Dorothy Day

If we had had the privilege of giving hospitality to a Ho Chi Minh, with what respect and interest we would have served him, as a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders. — Dorothy Day

If I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony, painted the most beautiful painting or carved the most exquisite figure I could not have felt the more exalted creator than I did when they placed my child in my arms. — Dorothy Day

Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading good books. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also of our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body. We get some sense of perspective reading such books. Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live. — Dorothy Day

The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them. — Dorothy Day

For to Ade, ... the holy man was the whole mad, the man of integrity, who not only tried to change the world, but to live in it as it was. — Dorothy Day

Have we even begun to be Christians? — Dorothy Day

No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the seeds of its own regeneration. — Dorothy Day

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions. — Dorothy Day

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. — Dorothy Day

MEDITATION ON THE BUS. Rainy and cold. Thinking gloomily of the sins and shortcomings of others, it suddenly came to me to remember my own offenses, just as heinous as those of others. If I concern myself with my own sins and lament them, if I remember my own failures and lapses, I will not be resentful of others. This was most cheering and lifted the load of gloom from my mind. It makes one unhappy to judge people and happy to love them. — Dorothy Day

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do. — Dorothy Day

If you are going to try and change things, you had better have your wits about you. — Dorothy Day

We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it. — Dorothy Day