We cannot love God unless we love 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. We have all known loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Christianity, Love
We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy, and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Character, Attitude, Abundance
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
Topics: Silence
I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Worry
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Gratitude
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Challenges
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.
—Dorothy Day
How necessary it is to cultivate a spirit of joy. It is a psychological truth that the physical acts of reverence and devotion make one feel devout. The courteous gesture increases one’s respect for others. To act lovingly is to begin to feel loving, and certainly to act joyfully brings joy to others which in turn makes one feel joyful. I believe we are called to the duty of delight.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Kindness
I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Worry
Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Effectiveness
Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
—Dorothy Day
Topics: Tradition
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
Topics: Suffering
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Daniel Berrigan American Catholic Poet
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Joan Baez American Singer
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Howard Zinn American Historian, Activist
- Thomas Merton American Trappist Monk
- Abbie Hoffman American Political Activist
- Tim Robbins American Actor, Director
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
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