Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day, Obl.S.B.,was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert...
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth8 November 1897
CityNew York City, NY
communism has-beens
It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over.
joy mind delight
It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.
time evil people
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.
church may matter
No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the seeds of its own regeneration.
two coats poor
If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor.
cities silence noise
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.
emotion exalted capable
We are not, most of us, capable of exalted emotion, save rarely.
children thinking nihilism
The Sexual Revolution is a complete rebellion against authority, natural and supernatural, even against the body and its needs, its natural functions of child bearing. This is not reverence for life, it is a great denial and more resembles Nihilism than the revolution that they think they are furthering.
sorrow lasts bitterness
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.
progress bricks steps
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
thinking understanding faults
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!
children order evil
Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one's life for the sick, the maimed, the leper. But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?
thinking attention way
It is we ourselves that we have to think about, no one else. That is the way the saints worked. They paid attention to what they were doing, and if others were attracted to them by their enterprise, why, well and good. But they looked to themselves first of all.
giving-up things-in-life life-is
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.