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The Biggest Mistake Sometimes Is To Play Things Very Safe In This Life And End Up Being Moral Failures.
-Dorothy Day
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The Biggest Mistake Sometimes

Dorothy Day
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The Biggest Mistake Sometimes Is To Play Things Very Safe In This Life And End Up Being Moral Failures.

Understanding the Quote: "the biggest mistake sometimes is to play things very safe in this..."

This quote by Dorothy Day reflects deeply on the theme of mistake. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mistake, Play, Safe, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Dorothy Day interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mistake and play. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Mistake
Play
Safe
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Soul
Body
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Where Were The Saints To Try To Change The Social Order, Not Just To Minister To The Slaves, But To Do Away With Slavery?
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Trying
Saint
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Conscience
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World
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Communist
Poor
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People
Evil
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Unions
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Rotten
Communist
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Should
Our Lives
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Heart
Neighborhood
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Trying
Heroic
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Heart
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Revolution
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Forgiveness
Weed
Advent Is A Time Of Waiting, Of Expectation, Of Silence. Waiting For Our Lord To Be Born. A Pregnant Woman Is So Happy, So Content. She Lives In Such A Garment Of Silence, And It Is As Though She Were Listening To Hear The Stir Of Life Within Her. One Always Hears That Stirring Compared To The Rustling Of A Bird In The Hand. But The Intentness Which Which One Awaits Such Stirring Is Like Nothing So Much As A Blanket Of Silence.
Hands
Expectations
Silence
If I Have Achieved Anything In My Life, It Is Because I Have Not Been Embarrassed To Talk About God.
Faith
Inspiration
Embarrassed
If We Love Each Other Enough, We Will Bear With Each Other’s Faults And Burdens.
Faults
Bears
Enough
With Prayer, One Can Go On Cheerfully And Even Happily. Without Prayer, How Grim A Journey!
Prayer
Journey
Goes On
We Must Always Aim For The Impossible; If We Lower Our Goal, We Also Diminish Our Effort.
Goal
Effort
Impossible
A Conversion Is A Lonely Experience.
Lonely
Conversion
The Only Answer In This Life, To The Loneliness We Are All Bound To Feel, Is Community.
Loneliness
Community
Answers
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
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.
Phones
House
Acting
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
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
It Is Only Through Religion That Communism Can Be Achieved, And Has Been Achieved Over And Over.
Communism
Has Beens
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
The Gospel Takes Away Our Right Forever, To Discriminate Between The Deserving And The Undeserving Poor.
Forever
Poor
Undeserving
As For Ourselves, Yes, We Must Be Meek, Bear Injustice, Malice, Rash Judgment. We Must Turn The Other Cheek, Give Up Our Cloak, Go A Second Mile.
Giving Up
Bears
Injustice
Life Itself Is A Haphazard, Untidy, Messy Affair.
Affair
Messy
Haphazard
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
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
Women Think With Their Whole Bodies And They See Things As A Whole More Than Men Do.
Strong Women
Thinking
Body
If You Have Two Coats, One Of Them Belongs To The Poor.
Two
Coats
Poor
When It Comes To Labor And Politics, I Am Inclined To Be Sympathetic To The Left, But When It Comes To The Catholic Church, Then I Am Far To The Right.
Catholic
Church
Sympathetic
Those Who Cannot See Christ In The Poor Are Atheists Indeed.
Atheist
Atheism
Christ
One Of The Disconcerting Facts About The Spiritual Life Is That God Takes You At Your Word.
Spiritual
Facts
Life Is
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
Our Rule Is The Works Of Mercy... It Is The Way Of Sacrifice, Worship, A Sense Of Reverence.
Sacrifice
Way
Worship
Idealism In The Young, I Guess I'm Saying, Is Curiosity As Well As Goodness Trying To Express Itself.
Curiosity
Trying
Goodness
God Meant For Things To Be Much Easier Than We Have Made Them
Easier
Made
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.
Thinking
Saint
Attention
I Believe That We Must Reach Our Brother, Never Toning Down Our Fundamental Oppositions, But Meeting Him When He Asks To Be Met, With A Reason For The Faith That Is In Us, As Well As With A Loving Sympathy For Them As Brothers.
Sympathy
Brother
Believe
I Firmly Believe That Our Salvation Depends On The Poor.
Believe
Poor
Salvation
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
Every Marxist Group That I've Known Has Its Theoreticians.
Groups
Marxist
Known
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
To Me, Birth Control And Abortion Are Genocide.i Say, Make Room For Children, Don't Do Away With Them.
Children
Abortion
Birth Control
It Is Best To Disregard Their Talk And Judge Only Their Actions.
Judging
Judgement
Action
The Biggest Mistake Sometimes Is To Play Things Very Safe In This Life And End Up Being Moral Failures.
Mistake
Play
Safe
Writing Is Hard Work. But If You Want To Become A Writer You Will Become One. Nothing Will Stop You.
Hard Work
Writing
Want
For Me Christ Was Not To Be Bought For Thirty Pieces Of Silver But With My Heart's Blood. We Buy Not Cheap In This Market.
Heart
Blood
Pieces
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
Two Years Ago, I Was Saying As I Planted Seeds In The Garden, "i Must Believe In These Seeds, That They Fall Into The Earth And Grow Into Flowers And Radishes And Beans." It Is A Miracle To Me Because I Do Not Understand It. The Very Fact That They Use Glib Technical Phrases Does Not Make It Any Less A Miracle, And A Miracle We All Accept. Then Why Not Accept God's Miracles?
Believe
Flower
Fall
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.
People
Track
Working Together
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
Don't Worry About Being Effective. Just Concentrate On Being Faithful To The Truth.
Success
Effectiveness
Worry
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 Works Of Mercy Are The Opposite Of The Works Of War, Feeding The Hungry, Sheltering The Homeless, Nursing The Sick, Visiting The Prisoner. But We Are Destroying Crops, Setting Fire To Entire Villages And To The People In Them. We Are Not Performing The Works Of Mercy But The Works Of War.
War
Nursing
Fire
I Really Only Love God As Much As I Love The Person I Love The Least.
Women
History
God Love
We Have All Known The Long Loneliness, And We Have Found That The Answer Is Community.
Loneliness
Being Alone
Community Living
Be Close Enough To People So That You Are Indifferent To The Material. And Also Have Faith.
People
Have Faith
Enough
The Work Is More Important Than The Talking And The Writing About The Work.
Writing
Talking
Important
As Dostoevski Said: 'love In Action Is A Harsh And Dreadful Thing Compared With Love In Dreams.
Relationship
Dream
Action
There's Enough Hate In The World. I Command You To Love. And You Have To Make An Effort.
Hate
Effort
World
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 Only Solution Is Love.
Love
Solutions
Turn Off Your Radio. Put Away Your Daily Paper. Read One Review Of Events A Week And Spend Some Time Reading Good Books. They Tell Too Of Days Of Striving And Of Strife. They Are Of Other Centuries And Also Of Our Own. They Make Us Realize That All Times Are Perilous, That Men Live In A Dangerous World, In Peril Constantly Of Losing Or Maiming Soul And Body. We Get Some Sense Of Perspective Reading Such Books. Renewed Courage And Faith And Even Joy To Live.
Book
Reading
Men
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