Dorothy Day Quotes - Page 6

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

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.

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?

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

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

It is people who are important, not the masses.

Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling.

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.

Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.

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.

Charity is only as warm as those who administer it.

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.

Women think with their whole bodies

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.

I have been disillusioned, however, this long, long time in the means used by any but the saints to live in this world God has made for us.

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.

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

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.

You can't write about things without doing them. You just have to live that same way.

I think anarchy is natural to the Catholic. The Church is pretty anarchistic, you know. Who pays attention to the Pope or the Cardinals?

The sense is always that community is natural to people.

We are all one body, we are all one.

Be close enough to people so that you are indifferent to the material. And also have faith.

Just as the birds of the air are fed, we'll continue to be fed.

The saying of Vatican II is above all, 'Conscience is supreme.'