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.

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

Paperwork, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all that happens-these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.

No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the seeds of its own regeneration.

It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.

I felt that the Church was the Church of the poor,... but at the same time, I felt that it did not set its face against a social order which made so much charity in the present sense of the word necessary. I felt that charity was a word to choke over. Who wanted charity? And it was not just human pride but a strong sense of man's dignity and worth, and what was due to him in justice, that made me resent, rather than feel pround of so mighty a sum total of Catholic institutions.

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.