Quotes About Vocation

I don't know if I would have made a better engineer than a cricketer. I definitely think I am a much better cricketer.

I love entertaining people! It's who I am.

A position is what you hold; a job is what you do.

Learning without thought," said Confucius, "is labor lost: thought without learning is perilous." When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his vocation partakes of a sacred character. "It is the parent who has borne me: it is the teacher who makes me man.

The preference that seems to have the most influence on occupational choice, the SN preference, determines in large part what will interest people. Sensing

El único camino para estar con los otros de verdad era estar separado de los otros, imponer tercamente a sí y a los otros esa incómoda singularidad y soledad en todas las horas y en todos los momentos de su vida, como es la vocación del poeta, del explorador, del revolucionario.

Perhaps my true vocation was that of author of apocrypha, in the several meanings of the term: because writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered; because the truth that can come from my pen is like a shard that has been chipped from a great boulder by a violent impact, then flung far away; because there is no certitude outside falsification.

A job should not define who or what you are. You should be able to leave today and it not change the overall purpose or direction of your life. Your calling is a much larger concept than what you do daily to create income. Work opportunities can come and go—the direction of your life should remain constant.

Would it be unreasonable to expect to find fulfilling, enjoyable, spiritually significant, income-producing work?

Work is not a curse of God but one of the benefits of living on this earth. Finding the work you love is not a self-serving goal; it is a required component of fulfilling your true calling.

The secret to creating a career that is both nurturing to the soul and the pocketbook is, as theologian Frederick Buechner said, to find where "your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."1 There you will find a job, a career, a business, and a life worth living. We cannot talk ourselves into doing something we do not inherently enjoy, no matter how spiritual that something may appear to those around us.

But that raises the question: What would you call your daily activity if you actually enjoyed it? Would it cease to be "work"?

A Prayer for Joy" Help me, O God, To listen to what it is that makes my heart glad And to follow where it leads. May joy, not guilt, Your voice, not the voices of others, Your will, not my willfulness, Be the guides that lead me to my vocation. Help me to unearth the passions of my heart That lay buried in my youth. And help me to go over that ground again and again Until I can hold in my hands, Hold and treasure, Your calling on my life. —Ken Gire, Windows of the Soul

The most common mistake people make in choosing a career is to do something simply because they are good at it.

As long as I have my health, I want to be reporting somewhere.

We don't do things we aren't good at by nature. I wouldn't play basketball because I'm only 5' 1". Find what you enjoy - whether it's racing, flying a helicopter, being a doctor, or stitching clothes together. Once you've done that, you have the passion you need.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

I would say that IQ is the strongest predictor of which field you can get into and hold a job in, whether you can be an accountant, lawyer or nurse, for example.

Some go on to trade schools or get further training for jobs they are interested in. Some go into the arts, some are craftsmen, some take a little time out to travel, and some start their own businesses. But our graduates find and work at what they want to do.

A calling is the most satisfying form of work because, as gratification, it is done for its own sake rather than for the material benefits it brings

You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation,   you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon   making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading,   wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.   How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.   —W. H. Auden

My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.

Won't teach any more if I can help it; don't like it; and if I can get writing enough can do much better.

People who love work, love life.