Dorothy Day Quotes

Saintliness is also a temptation.

I've had Christians treat me in a way that is so wrong and so vicious, I realized there's a difference between God's people and God.

Satan doesn't mind you using your strengths, so long as you do it for personal benefits.

Going in faith does not necessarily mean going with serenity or without doubts. Faith can be difficult.

She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.

... in a wicked way, it is an incentive to good living to observe the spice of enjoyment there is to a godly soul in a very little sin.

God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

Only saints can save the world. And only our own sins can stop us from being saints.

We are insane. That is what sin is. Sanctity is identitical with sanity. It means living the truth, living in reality. Sin always substitutes unreality for reality.

The true saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on takeoff.

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.

As long as we prioritize material truths over spiritual truths we will live in tyranny because we are living an illusion

We've got to remember the Book says the devil "walketh about the earth to and fro seeking who he may devour", and he nearly got me and he had me for a while. It didn't mean that I was no longer a Christian or that God had disowned me.

I won't be righteous again. I'm not sure anymore.

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.... The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him.

There is no right life in the wrong one.

And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the human mind. God set it up like that for a reason, which is this: God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.

Fear of God failing us leads us to "cover for God." This means we ask, expect, and are satisfied with less.

Life is effort. So says the body. Life is blessing. So says the soul.

I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.

Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee.

The New Age orgy: The flesh was willing but the spirit's weak.

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands — and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.