Vocation Quotes

Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. (Hermann Hesse)
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. View quote
Logan Pearsall Smith
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. View quote
Georges Simenon
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. View quote
Emma Goldman
For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty - statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction. View quote
Charles Krauthammer
A man can't ask for much more than the chance to make a difference in his chosen field of work. Politics is my vocation. I'm forever grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this great country of ours. I know I am a better person for it. View quote
Jean Chrétien
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy. View quote
Georges Simenon
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. View quote
Viktor Frankl
It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism. View quote
Friedrich Schlegel
Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image. View quote
Simone Weil
I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it. (Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger)
But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. View quote
Robert Frost
Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe, but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed. View quote
Bayard Rustin
It isn't at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation. View quote
Edward Said
My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence. View quote
Elvis Costello
It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation. View quote
George Santayana
By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation. View quote
R. H. Tawney
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. View quote
Jacques Ellul
I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade. View quote
Anish Kapoor
The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart. View quote
George Sand
To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for "the Absolute" was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood. (Mircea Eliade)
Each man has his own vocation his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame. View quote
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues
Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else. View quote
A. J. P. Taylor
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people. View quote
Leo Tolstoy