Quotes from Dorothy Day

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

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

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.

It is people who are important, not the masses.

True love is delicate and kind, full of gentle perception and understanding, full of beauty and grace, full of joy unutterable. There should be some flavor of this in all our love for others. We are all one. We are one flesh in the Mystical Body as man and woman are said to be one flesh in marriage. With such a love one would see all things new; we would begin to see people as they really are, as God sees them.

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.

Life itself is a haphazard, untidy, messy affair.

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

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

Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up.

As Dostoevski said: 'Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

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!

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?

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.

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

I felt that the Church was the Church of the poor,... but at the same time, I felt that it did not set its face against a social order which made so much charity in the present sense of the word necessary. I felt that charity was a word to choke over. Who wanted charity? And it was not just human pride but a strong sense of man's dignity and worth, and what was due to him in justice, that made me resent, rather than feel pround of so mighty a sum total of Catholic institutions.

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

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

Love in action is harsh and dreadful when compared to love in dreams.

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 a 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.

Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said.

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

Charity is only as warm as those who administer it.

Everything a baptized person does every day should be directly or indirectly related to the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.