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.
Dorothy DayThe holy man was the whole man, the man of integrity, who not only tried to change the world, but to live in it as it was.
Dorothy DayTo me, birth control and abortion are genocide.I say, make room for children, don't do away with them.
Dorothy DayTrue obedience is a matter of love, which makes it voluntary, not compelled by fear or force.
Dorothy DaySo many sins against the poor cry out to high heaven! One of the most deadly sins is to deprive the laborer of his hire. There is another: to instill in him paltry desires so compulsive that he is willing to sell his liberty and his honor to satisfy them. We are all guilty of concupiscence, but newspapers, radios, television, and battalions of advertising men (woe to that generation!) deliberately stimulate our desires, the satisfaction of which so often means the degradation of the family.
Dorothy DayDear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.
Dorothy DayWhatever 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?
Dorothy Day