Top 120 Dorothy Day Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Christ is God or He is the world’s greatest liar and imposter.”

— Dorothy Day

102. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

103. “If we had had the privilege of giving hospitality to a Ho Chi Minh, with what respect and interest we would have served him, as a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders.”

— Dorothy Day

104. “As Dostoevski said: ‘Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”

— Dorothy Day

105. “If you believe in the mission of Jesus Christ, then you’re bound to try to let go of your past, in the sense that you are entitled to his forgiveness. To keep regretting what was is to deny God’s grace.”

— Dorothy Day

106. “People have so great a need to reverence, to worship, to adore; it is a psychological necessity of human nature that must be taken into account.”

— Dorothy Day

107. “Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man’s greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war?”

— Dorothy Day

108. “When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me.”

— Dorothy Day

109. “A philosophy of work is essential if we would be whole men, holy men, healthy men, joyous men. A certain amount of goods is necessary for a man to lead a good life, and we have to make that kind of society where it is easier for men to be good.”

— Dorothy Day

110. “My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.”

— Dorothy Day

111. “Love is an exchange of gifts,′ Saint Ignatius had said. It was in these simple, practical, down-to-earth ways that people could show their love for each other. If the love was not there in the beginning, but only the need, such gifts made love grow.”

— Dorothy Day

112. “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

113. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

115. “It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over.”

— Dorothy Day

116. “Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that ’all things work together for good for those that love Him.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

118. “In one such church in Wilmington, Delaware, the police broke up the meeting by throwing tear-gas bombs through the windows and when the marchers broke out from the church in disorderly fashion, clubbed and arrested those whom they suspected of being the leaders.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

120. “We must practice the presence of God. He said that when two or three are gathered together, there he is in the midst of them. He is with us in our kitchens, at our tables, on our breadlines, with our visitors, on our farms. When we pray for our material needs, it brings us close to his humanity. He, too, needed food and shelter; he, too, warmed his hands at a fire and lay down in a boat to sleep.”

— Dorothy Day

121. “When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them.”

— Dorothy Day

122. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

123. “Of all the charges made against the Communists these days of congressional investigations, the charge of loose morals is seldom heard, so very loose have become those of “Christian” people.”

— Dorothy Day

124. “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.”

— Dorothy Day

125. “Think what the world could look like if we took care of the poor even half as well as we do our Bibles!”

— Dorothy Day

126. “First of all, let it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy.”

— Dorothy Day

127. “Love your enemies.” That is the hardest saying of all. Please, Father in heaven who made me, take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh to love my enemy. It is a terrible thought – “we love God as much as the one we love the least.”

— Dorothy Day

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

— Dorothy Day

129. “Life in community with broken people will always include such disappointments. But they can be met with resilience, and with a faith in the eternal significance of a life lived with the suffering. Such a life will never be easy or tidy; the work is endless and will always stretch on before us.”

— Dorothy Day

130. “Love is a commandment, Father Hugo said. It is a choice, a preference. If we love God with our whole hearts, how much heart have we left? If we love with our whole mind and soul and strength, how much mind and soul and strength have we left? We must live this life now. Death changes nothing. If we do not learn to enjoy God now we never will. If we do not learn to praise Him and thank Him and rejoice in Him now, we never will.”

— Dorothy Day

131. “When I think of the human suffering, the terrible amount of energy needed to move even infinitesimally toward a more decent life I am amazed at human patience.”

— Dorothy Day

132. “In spite of the conflicts in the radical movement much was gained by this constant agitation. Evictions were halted, relief came, playgrounds were built, slum houses were torn down, and conditions have somewhat improved.”

— Dorothy Day

133. “Common sense in religion is rare, and we are too often trying to be heroic instead of just ordinarily good and kind.”

— Dorothy Day