Dorothy Day Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  People, Effort, Deeds

  390 Copy quote

• I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.

  Dorothy Day

  Women, History, God Love

  332 Copy quote

• What we would like to do is change the world - make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do....We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing that we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.

  Dorothy Day

  Heart, Oasis, Cells

  358 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Our World, Racism

  395 Copy quote

• Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other's faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.

  Dorothy Day

  Love, Heart, Sacrifice

  "On Pilgrimage".

  264 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Day

  Forever, Poor, Undeserving

  357 Copy quote

• If you feed the poor, you're a saint. If you ask why they're poor, you're a Communist.

  Dorothy Day

  Saint, Communist, Poor

  338 Copy quote

• The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest places, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion which led to the cross, then we can truly say, 'Now I have begun'.

  Dorothy Day

  Brother, Heart, Passion

  "Loaves and Fishes". Book by Dorothy Day, 1963.

  284 Copy quote

• Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.

  Dorothy Day

  Success, Effectiveness, Worry

  260 Copy quote
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  No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.

  Dorothy Day

  Wisdom, Peace, Down And

  "Singing the Living Tradition" by the Unitarian Universalist Association, (p. 560), 1993.

  183 Copy quote

• Your love for God is only as great as the love you have for the person you love the least.

  Dorothy Day

  Love You, God Love, Persons

  18 Copy quote

• Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.

  Dorothy Day

  Voice, People, Evil

  237 Copy quote

• 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

  Love, People, Grace

  Dorothy Day (2012). “All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day”, p.326, Image

  177 Copy quote

• We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.

  Dorothy Day

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Community Living

  269 Copy quote

• So many sins against the poor cry out to high heaven! One of the most deadly sins is to deprive the laborer of his hire. There is another: to instill in him paltry desires so compulsive that he is willing to sell his liberty and his honor to satisfy them. We are all guilty of concupiscence, but newspapers, radios, television, and battalions of advertising men (woe to that generation!) deliberately stimulate our desires, the satisfaction of which so often means the degradation of the family.

  Dorothy Day

  Mean, Men, Heaven

  6 Copy quote

• What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.

  Dorothy Day

  Ponds, Deeds, Want

  "Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age" by Daniela Gioseffi, (p. 103), 1988.

  46 Copy quote
• 

  Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

  Dorothy Day

  Acceptance, Tyrants, Rotten

  "Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age" by Daniela Gioseffi, (p. 103), 1988.

  223 Copy quote

• 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

  Prayer, Believe, People

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Order, People

  43 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Day

  Sight, People, Comfort

  234 Copy quote

• If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.

  Dorothy Day

  Faith, Inspiration, Embarrassed

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Reading, Men

  Dorothy Day, Robert Ellsberg (2008). “The duty of delight: the diaries of Dorothy Day”, Marquette Univ Pr

  93 Copy quote

• Most of our life is unimportant, filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.

  Dorothy Day

  Morning, Angel, Night

  23 Copy quote

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

  Dorothy Day

  Joy, Vocation, Knows

  97 Copy quote

• You can spend your time agonizing or organizing.

  Dorothy Day

  Agonizing

  54 Copy quote

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