True obedience is a matter of love, which makes it voluntary, not compelled by fear or force.

God forbid we should have great institutions. The thing is to have many small centres. The ideal is community.

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.

We want no revolution; we want the brotherhood of men. We want men to love one another. We want all men to have what is sufficient for their needs. And now - strange thought - the devil has so maneuvered that the people turn from Him because those who profess Him are clothed in soft raiment and sit at well-spread tables and deny the poor.

The idea that when the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered is a teaching of St Paul which is timeless.

The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.

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.