Top 120 Dorothy Day Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Idealism in the young, I guess I’m saying, is curiosity as well as goodness trying to express itself.”

— Dorothy Day

52. “What we would like to do is change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do.”

— Dorothy Day

53. “If I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony, painted the most beautiful painting or carved the most exquisite figure I could not have felt the more exalted creator than I did when they placed my child in my arms.”

— Dorothy Day

54. “Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?”

— Dorothy Day

55. “The final word is love.”

— Dorothy Day

56. “If you are going to try and change things, you had better have your wits about you.”

— Dorothy Day

57. “I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.”

— Dorothy Day

58. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

59. “We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice.”

— Dorothy Day

60. “The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.”

— Dorothy Day

61. “The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war.”

— Dorothy Day

62. “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms.”

— Dorothy Day

63. “If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.”

— Dorothy Day

64. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

65. “A conversion is a lonely experience.”

— Dorothy Day

66. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

67. “I believe some people – lots of people – pray to 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?”

— Dorothy Day

68. “With prayer, one can go on cheerfully and even happily. Without prayer, how grim a journey!”

— Dorothy Day

69. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

70. “The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.”

— Dorothy Day

71. “Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.”

— Dorothy Day

72. “Charity is only as warm as those who administer it.”

— Dorothy Day

73. “Dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.”

— Dorothy Day

74. “The work is more important than the talking and the writing about the work.”

— Dorothy Day

75. “It is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions...”

— Dorothy Day

76. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

77. “We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.”

— Dorothy Day

78. “Most of our life is unimportant, filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.”

— Dorothy Day

79. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

80. “You see I’m such a fool that I’m never afraid of appearing foolish.”

— Dorothy Day

81. “One of the disconcerting facts about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word.”

— Dorothy Day

82. “I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

84. “Christian philosophy of work was this. God is our creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators. He gave us a garden to till and cultivate. We become co-creators by our responsible acts, whether in bringing forth children, or producing food, furniture or clothing. The joy of creativeness should be ours.”

— Dorothy Day

85. “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!”

— Dorothy Day

86. “How much did I hear of religion as a child? Very little, and yet my heart leaped when I heard the name of God. I do believe every soul has a tendency toward God.”

— Dorothy Day

87. “Every one of us who was attracted to the poor had a sense of guilt, of responsibility, a feeling that in some way we were living on the labor of others. The fact that we were born in a certain environment, were enabled to go to school, were endowed with the ability to compete with others and hold our own, that we had few physical disabilities – all these things marked us as the privileged in a way.”

— Dorothy Day

88. “It is easier to have faith that God will support each House of Hospitality and Farming Commune and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us – to see Christ in him.”

— Dorothy Day

89. “I believe that we must reach our brother, never toning down our fundamental oppositions, but meeting him when he asks to be met, with a reason for the faith that is in us, as well as with a loving sympathy for them as brothers.”

— Dorothy Day

90. “What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships?”

— Dorothy Day

91. “Thank God that He has permitted us to live among the present problems. It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre.”

— Dorothy Day

92. “Freedom has its roots in religion...”

— Dorothy Day

93. “Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action.”

— Dorothy Day

94. “When they call you a saint, it means basically that you are not to be taken seriously.”

— Dorothy Day

95. “This is so rich a country that luxury has developed at the expense of necessities, and even the destitute partake of the luxury. We are the rich country of the world, like Dives at the feast. We must try hard, we must study to be poor like Lazarus at the gate, who was taken into Abraham’s bosom.”

— Dorothy Day

96. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

97. “We are not, most of us, capable of exalted emotion, save rarely.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

99. “We must recognize the fact that many Nazis, Marxists and Fascists believe passionately in their fundamental rightness, and allow nothing to hinder them from their goal in the pursuit of their mission.”

— Dorothy Day

100. “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.”

— Dorothy Day