Quotes About Vocation

“You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right.”

— Dorothy Day

“It is the vocation of the Christian in every generation to out-think all opposition.”

— Elton Trueblood

“She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.”

— Isabel Allende

“It was his vocation to pleasure as many women as possible, in pursuit of his own pleasure. It was as close to a job as he got.”

— Rosanna Leo

“You can't put nothing past these southern boys. They just sit around waiting for somebody to kill their brother so they can get started on some vengeance. It's like a dang vocation with them”

— Alden Bell

“Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.”

— Aldo Leopold

“Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.”

— Thomas Merton

“It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocation one grew out of as quickly as possible.”

— Pat Conroy

“As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.”

— Immanuel Kant

“One of my objectives when I started Biocon was to make sure that I create a company for women scientists to pursue a vocation.”

— Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

“In law, one's sense of calling or vocation will lead one to be interested in certain dimensions of Constitutional law.”

— Ken Starr

“The lawyer has not reached the height of his vocation who does not find therein ... scope for a peculiar but genuine artistic function.”

— Frederick Pollock

“Politics is my hobby. Smut is my vocation.”

— Larry Flynt

“Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have always done, spreading the light of the Lord ... and transforming the world into a welcoming home for everyone.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

“A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.”

— Simon Hoggart

“Whatever vocation you decide on, track down the best people in the world at doing it and surround yourself with them.”

— Scott Weiss

“No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that's my real vocation, and I have to serve it.”

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

“Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.”

— Michael Moriarty

“My first vocation was dance.”

— Victoria Abril

“Behind every vocation there is a fetish.”

— Hanif Kureishi

“I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step for achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete's strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete just because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve something with it you need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views.
- Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

“To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation.”

— Noam Chomsky

“You thought you'd never give up your vocation, a voice whispered inside me. You thought you'd never even consider it. But you've met the one man who could change your mind. He is your perfect complement. He is Cathal to your Clodagh; he is Bran to your Liadan. No wonder you conjured up those images. No wonder they make you weep.”

— Juliet Marillier

“Ambition left to itself, like a Rupert Murdoch, always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. We find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey.”

— David Whyte

“I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.”

— F. Sionil Jose

“Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.”

— Parker J. Palmer

“Traffic with the world is laid upon us for chastening, and for the testing of our vocation. The grace of God is not endangered by the follies or the wickedness of men.”

— Ellis Peters

“Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call-one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God.”

— Dolores Hart

“The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world's great needs.”

— Eric Greitens

“It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value ...”

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

“Is it acting a true vocation? ... I say it is a gift ... And fame? Neither sought nor expected ... still confounds and amazes and disturbs. Whatever the reason ... I am so very delighted that it did happen ... I would not have missed it for the world ...”

— Ruth Cracknell

“Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish
Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed
himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and
has lived selflessly for the art”

— Seamus Heaney

“I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.”

— Mavis Gallant

“It is not sociologists who provide insights but photographers of our sort who are observers at the very center of their times. I have always felt strongly that this was the photographer's true vocation.”

— Brassai

“Our Vocation is full of joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.”

— Catherine McAuley

“Potential does not always ensure success. The greatest players have not always been the most endowed. In athletics, we often hear the phrase, "He has the will to win". I think this is wrong. We can have the greatest will to do well. But unless we have prepared, it is of little use. Really, it should be the "will to prepare". Those who succeed have this will, whether it be in athletics, whether it be in school, whether it be in their chosen vocation, whether it be on a mission, or in almost any other phase of their life.”

— LaVell Edwards

“The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.”

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

“To learn a vocation, you also have to learn the frauds it practices and the promises it breaks.”

— Mason Cooley

“Education provides you a profession. But not vocation. You do it only because you need to work to earn money to buy your food, buy your clothes, pay the bills. Our life has a greater meaning, and a greater purpose.”

— Satish Kumar

“Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society , from politics , from history , for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt , which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.”

— Jacques Ellul

“Never permit me to disgrace my high vocation by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.”

— Mother Teresa

“Your vocation lies in the intersection of the world's deep need and your deep joy.”

— Frederick Buechner

“Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“Just because you cannot realize your highest aspirations in work does not mean you have chosen wrongly, or are not called to your profession, or that you should spend your life looking for the perfect career that is devoid of frustration ... You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work even though you may be in exactly the right vocation.”

— Timothy Keller

“We live a pleasant life shopping at the Food Shoppe ... taking the kids to the Weinery-Beanery, ... and eating bran flakes .. and then, with no warning, we wake up one morning stricken with middle age, full of loneliness, dumb, in pain. Our work is useless, our vocation is lost, and nobody cares about us at all. This is not bearable. In despair, we go do something spectacularly dumb, like run away with Amber the cocktail waitress, and suddenly all the women in our life look at us with unmitigated disgust.”

— Garrison Keillor

“The rediscovery of the value of one's baptism is the basis of the missionary commitment of every Christian, because we see in the Gospel that he who lets himself be fascinated by Christ cannot do without witnessing the joy of following in his footsteps ... we understand even more that, in virtue of baptism, we have an inherent missionary vocation.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

“The vocation and mission of the faithful can only be understood in light of a renewed awareness of the Church as sacrament or sign and instrument of intimate union with God, of the unity of the whole of mankind, and of the personal duty to adhere more closely to her.”

— Pope John Paul II

“The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.”

— Christian Nestell Bovee