Quotes from Dorothy Day

We're under obligation to love - that's the commandment.

There's enough hate in the world. I command you to love. And you have to make an effort.

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

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.

As a child, I came across the Bible, but nobody in my family had anything to do with religion. I just felt a profound truth there that appealed to me.

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.

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

Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.

Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate.

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

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

We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.

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.

Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.

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

The holy man was the whole man, the man of integrity, who not only tried to change the world, but to live in it as it was.

Some have more capacity. Some proceed a few steps along the way. But Christ seemed to love all men. He desired all to be saved.

It's Godlike to love man - even in his sin - merely because he's man.

They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.

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.

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

These powerless people at the bottom are the ones with whom we must begin. They must have the insight and the knowledge to work together and recognise that they are on the right track.

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

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.