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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
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It Is We Ourselves

Dorothy Day
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.
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Thinking
Saint
Attention
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The Sexual Revolution Is A Complete Rebellion Against Authority, Natural And Supernatural, Even Against The Body And Its Needs, Its Natural Functions Of Child Bearing. This Is Not Reverence For Life, It Is A Great Denial And More Resembles Nihilism Than The Revolution That They Think They Are Furthering.
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We Must Recognize The Fact That Many Nazis, Marxists And Fascists Believe Passionately In Their Fundamental Rightness, And Allow Nothing To Hinder Them From Their Goal In The Pursuit Of Their Mission.
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To Love With Understanding And Without Understanding. To Love Blindly, And To Folly. To See Only What Is Loveable. To Think Only Of These Things. To See The Best In Everyone Around, Their Virtues Rather Than Their Faults. To See Christ In Them!
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We Cannot Love God Unless We Love Each Other, And To Love We Must Know Each Other. We Know Him In The Breaking Of Bread, And We Know Each Other In The Breaking Of Bread, And We Are Not Alone Anymore. Heaven Is A Banquet And Life Is A Banquet, Too, Even With A Crust, Where There Is Companionship.
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The Only Answer In This Life, To The Loneliness We Are All Bound To Feel, Is Community.
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Community
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I Do Not Know How To Love God Except By Loving The Poor. I Do Not Know How To Serve God Except By Serving The Poor.... Here, Within This Great City Of Nine Million People, We Must, In This Neighborhood, On This Street, In This Parish, Regain A Sense Of Community Which Is The Basis For Peace In The World.
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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.
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There Is Something So Horrifying And So Sad When People Are Living Alone. That Is Why The Old And Lonely Come To Us.
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We Cannot Build Up The Idea Of The Apostolate Of The Laity Without The Foundation Of The Liturgy.
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Marx.... Lenin.... Mao Tse-tung.... These Men Were Animated By The Love Of Brother And This We Must Believe Though Their Ends Meant The Seizure Of Power, And The Building Of Mighty Armies, The Compulsion Of Concentration Camps, The Forced Labor And Torture And Killing Of Tens Of Thousands, Even Millions.
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We Are All One Body, We Are All One.
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One Of The Disconcerting Facts About The Spiritual Life Is That God Takes You At Your Word.
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God Meant For Things To Be Much Easier Than We Have Made Them
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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.
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I Offered Up A Special Prayer, A Prayer Which Came With Tears And Anguish, That Some Way Would Open Up For Me To Use What Talents I Possessed For My Fellow Workers, For The Poor.
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A 'dictatorship Of The Proletariat' Becomes Again Another Dictator.
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Strong
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Sin
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Hands
Expectations
Silence
We Must Always Aim For The Impossible; If We Lower Our Goal, We Also Diminish Our Effort.
Goal
Effort
Impossible
And I Was To Find Out Then, As I Found Out So Many Times, Over And Over Again, That Women Especially Are Social Beings, Who Are Not Content With Just Husband And Family, But Must Have A Community, A Group, An Exchange With Others. A Child Is Not Enough. A Husband And Children, No Matter How Busy One May Be Kept By Them, Are Not Enough. Young And Old, Even In The Busiest Years Of Our Lives, We Women Especially Are Victims Of The Long Loneliness.
Husband
Children
Loneliness
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Order
Trying
Saint
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Kindness
Believe
Joy
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Communism
Has Beens
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Coffee
Practice
Giving
I Have Been Disillusioned, However, This Long, Long Time In The Means Used By Any But The Saints To Live In This World God Has Made For Us.
Mean
Long
Saint
The Biggest Mistake Sometimes Is To Play Things Very Safe In This Life And End Up Being Moral Failures.
Mistake
Play
Safe
To Try To Stop War By Placing Before Men's Eyes The Terrible Suffering Involved Will Never Succeed, Because Men Are Willing (in Their Thoughts And Imaginations At Least) To Face Any Kind Of Suffering When Motivated By Noble Aims Like The Vague And Tremendous Concept Of Freedom ... Or, In Their Humility (or Sloth - Who Knows?) Men Are Quite Willing To Leave Decisions To Others 'who Know More About It Than We Do.
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Humility
Eye
The Only Solution Is Love.
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Solutions
Once A Priest Told Us That No One Gets Up In The Pulpit Without Promulgating A Heresy. He Was Joking, Of Course, But What I Suppose He Meant Was The Truth Was So Pure, So Holy, That It Was Hard To Emphasize One Aspect Of The Truth Without Underestimating Another, That We Did Not See Things As A Whole, But Through A Glass Darkly, As St. Paul Said.
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Track
Working Together
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.
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My Strength Returns To Me With My Cup Of Coffee And The Reading Of The Psalms.
Coffee
Reading
Cups
The Gospel Takes Away Our Right Forever, To Discriminate Between The Deserving And The Undeserving Poor.
Forever
Poor
Undeserving
Food For The Body Is Not Enough. There Must Be Food For The Soul.
Food
Soul
Body
When You Love People, You See All The Good In Them, All The Christ In Them. God Sees Christ, His Son, In Us And Loves Us. And So We Should See Christ In Others, And Nothing Else, And Love Them. There Can Never Be Enough Of It. There Can Never Be Enough Thinking About It.
Son
Thinking
People
No One Has A Right To Sit Down And Feel Hopeless. There's Too Much Work To Do.
Wisdom
Peace
Down And
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.
Strong
Pride
Men
With Prayer, One Can Go On Cheerfully And Even Happily. Without Prayer, How Grim A Journey!
Prayer
Journey
Goes On
Love And Ever More Love Is The Only Solution To Every Problem That Comes Up.
Love Is
Problem
Come Up
One Of The Greatest Evils Of The Day Among Those Outside Of Prison Is Their Sense Of Futility. Young People Say, What Is The Sense Of Our Small Effort? They Cannot See That We Must Lay One Brick At A Time, Take One Step At A Time; We Can Be Responsible Only For The One Action Of The Present Moment.
Time
People
Evil
The Older I Get, The More I Meet People, The More Convinced I Am That We Must Only Work On Ourselves, To Grow In Grace. The Only Thing We Can Do About People Is To Love Them.
Love
People
Grace
The Anarchist Philosophy Is That The New Social Order Is To Be Built Up By Groupings Of Men Together In Communities - Whether In Communities Of Work Or Communities Of Culture Or Communities Of Artists - But In Communities.
Philosophy
Artist
Men
Together With The Works Of Mercy, Feeding, Sheltering, And Clothing Our Brothers, We Must Indoctrinate.
Brother
Together
Mercy
Your Love For God Is Only As Great As The Love You Have For The Person You Love The Least.
Love You
God Love
Persons
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Phones
House
Acting
I Can Write No Other Than This: Unless We Use The Weapons Of The Spirit, Denying Ourselves And Taking Up Our Cross And Following Jesus, Dying With Him And Rising With Him, Men Will Go On Fighting, And Often From The Highest Motives, Believing That They Are Fighting Defensive Wars For Justice And In Self-defense Against Present Or Future Aggression.
Jesus
War
Believe
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.
Sorrow
Lasts
Bitterness
Some Have More Capacity. Some Proceed A Few Steps Along The Way. But Christ Seemed To Love All Men. He Desired All To Be Saved.
Men
Way
Steps
If I Did Not Believe, If I Did Not Make What Is Called An Act Of Faith (and Each Act Of Faith Increases Our Faith, And Our Capacity For Faith), If I Did Not Have Faith That The Works Of Mercy Do Lighten The Sum Total Of Suffering In The World, So That Those Who Are Suffering On Both Sides Of This Ghastly Struggle Somehow Mysteriously Find Their Pain Lifted And Some Balm Of Consolation Poured On Their Wounds, If I Did Not Believe These Things, The Problem Of Evil Would Indeed Be Overwhelming.
Pain
Believe
Struggle
Be Close Enough To People So That You Are Indifferent To The Material. And Also Have Faith.
People
Have Faith
Enough
I Think One Of The Things We Must Constantly Keep In Mind Is, 'if Anybody Hits You On One Cheek, Turn The Other.'
Thinking
Mind
Turns
Our Rule Is The Works Of Mercy... It Is The Way Of Sacrifice, Worship, A Sense Of Reverence.
Sacrifice
Way
Worship
Freedom Has Its Roots In Religion.
Roots
Idealism In The Young, I Guess I'm Saying, Is Curiosity As Well As Goodness Trying To Express Itself.
Curiosity
Trying
Goodness
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.
Powerful
Fighting
World
The Work Is More Important Than The Talking And The Writing About The Work.
Writing
Talking
Important
If You Are Rushed For Time, Sow Time And You Will Reap Time. Go To Church And Spend A Quiet Hour In Prayer. You Will Have More Time Than Ever And Your Work Will Get Done. Sow Time With The Poor. Sit And Listen To Them, Give Them Your Time Lavishly. You Will Reap Time A Hundredfold.
Prayer
Giving
Church
The 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.
Integrity
Men
World
Our Problems Stem From Our Acceptance Of This Filthy, Rotten System.
Acceptance
Tyrants
Rotten
It Is People Who Are Important, Not The Masses.
People
Important
Mass
I Think That Just As We're In The Nuclear Era We're Also In An Era Of Non-violence. It's Undefeatable.
Thinking
Nuclear
Eras
As A Child, I Came Across The Bible, But Nobody In My Family Had Anything To Do With Religion. I Just Felt A Profound Truth There That Appealed To Me.
Children
Profound
My Family
The Legal Battle Against Segregation Is Won, But The Community Battle Goes On.
Community
Battle
Goes On
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.
Names
Mediocrity
Proud
I Was Always Much Impressed, In Reading Prison Memoirs Of Revolutionists, Such As Lenin And Trotsky ... By The Amount Of Reading They Did, The Languages They Studied, The Range Of Their Plans For A Better Social Order. (or Rather, For A New Social Order.) In The Acts Of The Apostles There Are Constant References To The Way And The New Man.
Reading
Men
Order
Over And Over Again, People Had To Disobey Lawful Authority To Follow The Voice Of Their Conscience. This Obedience To God And Disobedience To The State Has, Over And Over Again, Happened Throughout History. It Is Time Again To Cry Out Against Our 'leaders,' To Question (since It Is Not For Us To Say That They Are Evil) Whether Or Not They Are Sane.
Voice
People
Evil
An Individual Can March For Peace Or Vote For Peace And Can Have, Perhaps, Some Small Influence On Global Concerns. But The Same Individual Is A Giant In The Eyes Of A Child At Home. If Peace Is To Be Built, It Must Start With The Individual. It Is Built Brick By Brick.
Children
Home
Eye
Thank God That He Has Permitted Us To Live Among The Present Problems. It Is No Longer Permitted To Anyone To Be Mediocre.
Thank God
Problem
Mediocre
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.
Spiritual
Reading
Night
It Is Best To Disregard Their Talk And Judge Only Their Actions.
Judging
Judgement
Action
If You Feed The Poor, You're A Saint. If You Ask Why They're Poor, You're A Communist.
Saint
Communist
Poor
The Whole Point Of View Of The Anarchist Is That Everything Must Start From The Bottom Up, From Man. It Seems To Me So Human A Philosophy.
Philosophy
Men
Views
Think What The World Could Look Like If We Took Care Of The Poor Even Half As Well As We Do Our Bibles!
Thinking
Looks
Half
People, Wherever They Are, Can Make A Community.
People
Community
We Should Live In Such A Way That Our Lives Wouldn't Make Much Sense If The Gospel Were Not True.
Way
Should
Our Lives
How Much Did I Hear Of Religion As A Child? Very Little, And Yet My Heart Leaped When I Heard The Name Of God. I Do Believe Every Soul Has A Tendency Toward God.
God
Children
Believe
Castro Wasn't A Marxist. He Was A Catholic Educated By The Christian Brothers And The Jesuits. But Fundamentally, I'm Not Talking About Practising Catholics, But Rather About Something Which Is Inbred; That Is, A Part Of Your Country, Your Heritage, Your Life.
Christian
Country
Brother
The Communists In Cuba Didn't Assist Castro In His Revolution. They Weren't On The Side Of The Students. They Didn't Do Anything To Help In The Invasion Or The Long-continuing Struggle From The Oriente Province Down.
Struggle
Long
Revolution
Love Casts Out Fear, But We Have To Get Over The Fear In Order To Get Close Enough To Love Them.
Fear
Reality
Order
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.
Men
Brotherhood Of Man
People
Certainly We Disagree With The Communist Party, As We Disagree With Other Political Parties Who Are Trying To Maintain The American Way Of Life.
Party
Political
Trying
Dear God, Please Enlarge Our Hearts To Love Each Other, To Love Our Neighbor, To Love Our Enemy As Well As Our Friend.
Heart
Enemy
Dear God
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.
Life
Giving
Poverty
The Only Way To Live In Any True Security Is To Live So Close To The Bottom That When You Fall You Do Not Have Far To Drop, You Do Not Have Much To Lose.
Fall
Way To Live
Bottom
I Think Anarchy Is Natural To The Catholic. The Church Is Pretty Anarchistic, You Know. Who Pays Attention To The Pope Or The Cardinals?
Thinking
Catholic
Church
If You Are Going To Try And Change Things, You Had Better Have Your Wits About You.
Trying
Wit
Ifs
An Act Of Love, A Voluntary Taking On Oneself Of Some Of The Pain Of The World, Increases The Courage And Love And Hope Of All.
Love
Hope
Courage
Common Sense In Religion Is Rare, And We Are Too Often Trying To Be Heroic Instead Of Just Ordinarily Good And Kind.
Common Sense
Trying
Heroic
When You Love People, You See All The Good In Them, All The Christ In Them.
People
Christ
I Have Long Since Come To Believe That People Never Mean Half Of What They Say, And That It Is Best To Disregard Their Talk And Judge Only Their Actions.
Inspirational
Believe
Mean
I Really Only Love God As Much As I Love The Person I Love The Least.
Women
History
God Love
Love And Ever More Love Is The Only Solution To Every Problem That Comes Up. If We Love Each Other Enough, We Will Bear With Each Other's Faults And Burdens. If We Love Enough, We Are Going To Light That Fire In The Hearts Of Others. And It Is Love That Will Burn Out The Sins And Hatreds That Sadden Us. It Is Love That Will Make Us Want To Do Great Things For Each Other. No Sacrifice And No Suffering Will Then Seem Too Much.
Love
Heart
Sacrifice
The Final Word Is Love.
Finals
Final Words
Those Who Cannot See Christ In The Poor Are Atheists Indeed.
Atheist
Atheism
Christ
Communities Are Made Up Of The Unlovable As Well As The Lovable.
Community
Lovable
Made
Too Much Praise Makes You Feel You Must Be Doing Something Terribly Wrong.
Too Much
Praise
Feels
Do Not Give To The Poor Expecting To Get Their Gratitude So That You Can Feel Good About Yourself. If You Do, Your Giving Will Be Thin And Short-lived, And That Is Not What The Poor Need; It Will Only Improvish Them Further. Give Only If You Have Something You Must Give; Give Only If You Are Someone For Whom Giving Is Its Own Reward.
Gratitude
Giving
Feel Good
The Best Thing To Do With The Best Things In Life Is To Give Them Up.
Inspirational
Life
Christian
The Greatest Challenge Of The Day Is: How To Bring About A Revolution Of The Heart, A Revolution Which Has To Start With Each One Of Us. When We Begin To Take The Lowest Places, To Wash The Feet Of Others, To Love Our Brothers With That Burning Love, That Passion Which Led To The Cross, Then We Can Truly Say, 'now I Have Begun'.
Brother
Heart
Passion
You Can Spend Your Time Agonizing Or Organizing.
Agonizing
What We Would Like To Do Is Change The World - Make It A Little Simpler For People To Feed, Clothe, And Shelter Themselves As God Intended For Them To Do....we Can, To A Certain Extent, Change The World; We Can Work For The Oasis, The Little Cell Of Joy And Peace In A Harried World. We Can Throw Our Pebble In The Pond And Be Confident That Its Ever Widening Circle Will Reach Around The World. We Repeat, There Is Nothing That We Can Do But Love, And, Dear God, Please Enlarge Our Hearts To Love Each Other, To Love Our Neighbor, To Love Our Enemy As Well As Our Friend.
Heart
Oasis
Cells
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.
Kings
Hands
Working Together
Whatever 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?
Children
Order
Evil
The Theoretician Of The Marxist Revolution In Cuba Certainly Wasn't Castro. It Was Don Carlos Rafaelo Rodriguez. He Was The Theoretician And Very Often People Say He Will Take Over. But I Don't Believe It. I Think That It's A Very Good Combination - The Catholic Man Working Together With A Man Like That Who Has Everything Pretty Well Planned.
Believe
Men
Thinking
The Greatest Challenge Of The Day Is: How To Bring About A Revolution Of The Heart, A Revolution Which Has To Start With Each One Of Us?
Heart
Catholic
Challenges
Voluntary Poverty Isn't Going Around With Some Burlap Bag Around You And Imitating The Poor. It Means Being Indifferent To The Material, Doing As Christ Said. He Went And Sat Down With The Rich And Zachaeus And Publicans And Sinners.
Mean
Bags
Poverty
Maybe I Was Praying For Him Then, In My Own Way. Does God Have A Set Way Of Prayer, A Way That He Expects Each Of Us To Follow? I Doubt It. I Believe Some People-- Lots Of People-- Pray Through The Witness Of Their Lives, Through The Work They Do, The Friendships They Have, The Love They Offer People And Receive From People. Since When Are Words The Only Acceptable Form Of Prayer?
Prayer
Believe
People
It Wasn't Until Castro Marched Triumphantly Into Cuba That You Might Say The Whole Thing Grew Into A Marxist Revolution.
Cuba
Might
Revolution
When They Call You A Saint, It Means Basically That You Are Not To Be Taken Seriously.
Taken
Mean
Saint
If You Have Two Coats, One Of Them Belongs To The Poor.
Two
Coats
Poor
Charity Is Only As Warm As Those Who Administer It.
Charity
Warm
What I Want To Bring Out Is How A Pebble Cast Into A Pond Causes Ripples That Spread In All Directions. And Each One Of Our Thoughts, Words And Deeds Is Like That.
Ponds
Deeds
Want
Our Faith Is Stronger Than Death, Our Philosophy Is Firmer Than Flesh, And The Spread Of The Kingdom Of God Upon The Earth Is More Sublime And More Compelling.
Philosophy
Sublime
Stronger
What We Would Like To Do Is Change The World - Make It A Little Simpler For People To Feed, Clothe, And Shelter Themselves As God Intended For Them To Do.
Compassion
People
World
The Sense Is Always That Community Is Natural To People.
People
Community
Natural
People Say, What Is The Sense Of Our Small Effort? They Cannot See That We Must Lay One Brick At A Time, Take One Step At A Time. A Pebble Cast Into A Pond Causes Ripples That Spread In All Directions. Each One Of Our Thoughts, Words And Deeds Is Like That. No One Has A Right To Sit Down And Feel Hopeless. There Is Too Much Work To Do.
People
Effort
Deeds
I Cannot Worry Much About Your Sins And Miseries When I Have So Many Of My Own. I Can Only Love You All, Poor Fellow Travellers, Fellow Sufferers. I Do Not Want To Add One Least Straw To The Burden You Already Carry.
Prayer
Love You
Heart
They Cannot See That We Must Lay One Brick At A Time, Take One Step At A Time.
Progress
Bricks
Steps
Every Marxist Group That I've Known Has Its Theoreticians.
Groups
Marxist
Known
Some Can Go Further Than Others.
So 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.
Mean
Men
Heaven
We Are All Called To Be Saints, St. Paul Says, And We Might As Well Get Over Our Bourgeois Fear Of The Name. We Might Also Get Used To Recognizing The Fact That There Is Some Of The Saint In All Of Us.
Names
Saint
Might
There Could Be A 'community Of Communities' Rather Than A State. They Would Be United In Some Way But Without Any Governing Body. It Would Be Made Up Of Unions, Credit Unions Instead Of Banks. There Would Be No More Lending At Interest. There Would Be No More Money Lenders.
Community
Unions
Way
Poverty Is A Strange And Elusive Thing. ... I Condemn Poverty And I Advocate It; Poverty Is Simple And Complex At Once; It Is A Social Phenomenon And A Personal Matter. Poverty Is An Elusive Thing, And A Paradoxical One. We Need Always To Be Thinking And Writing About It, For If We Are Not Among Its Victims Its Reality Fades From Us. We Must Talk About Poverty Because People Insulated By Their Own Comfort Lose Sight Of It.
Writing
Simple
Reality
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.
Teaching
Ideas
Suffering
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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