Quotes and passages on

Let yourself be silently drawn by the
strange pulling of what you really
love. It will not lead you astray.

Rumi

Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It’s a part of your life force. It’s the thing that gives you juice. The thing you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself. Oprah Winfrey

Rue it as he may, repent it as he often does, the person of genius is drawn by an irresistible impulse to the occupation for which he or she was created. No matter by what difficulties surrounded, no matter how unpromising the prospect, this occupation is the only one which he or she will pursue with interest and pleasure. When one's efforts fail to procure means of subsistence, and one finds oneself poor and neglected, one may, like Burns, often look back with a sigh and think how much better off he or she would be had they pursued some other occupation, but that person will stick to his or her favorite pursuit nevertheless. Robert Waters

The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy--angles leading their flocks out of the darkness. Jeannette Walls Half Broke Horses

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. Vincent van Gogh

You can't fulfill your calling in your comfort zone!

Steven Furtick

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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.

Thomas Merton

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist,
will answer you: I am here to live out loud.

Émile Zola

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds
them employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets,
or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'll give you an example of a woman who had some difficulty finding out what her job was in the divine plan. She was in her early forties, single, and needed to earn a living. She hated her work to the extent that it made her sick, and the first thing she did was to go to a psychiatrist who said he would adjust her to her job. So after some adjustment she went back to work. But she still hated her job. She got sick again and then came to me. Well, I asked what her calling was, and she said, "I'm not called to do anything."

That was not true. What she really meant was she didn't know her calling. So I asked her what she liked to do because if it is your calling you will do it as easily and joyously as I walk my pilgrimage. I found she liked to do three things. She liked to play the piano, but wasn't good enough to earn her living at that. She liked to swim, but wasn't good enough to be a swimming instructor, and she liked to work with flowers.

I got her a job in a florist shop so she could earn her living working with flowers. She loved it. She said she would do it for nothing. But we used the other things, too. Remember, she needed more than just a livelihood. She needed other things. The swimming became her exercise. It fits in with sensible living habits. The piano playing became her path of service. She went to a retirement home and played the old songs for the people there. She got them to sing, and she was good at that. Out of those three things such a beautiful life was built for that woman. She became a very attractive woman and married a year or so later. She stayed right in that life pattern.

Peace Pilgrim

I believe there's a calling for all of us. I know that every human
being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to
become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.

Oprah Winfrey

But beware of this about callings: they may not lead us where we
intended to go or even where we want to go. If we choose to follow,
we may have to be willing to let go of the life we already planned
and accept whatever is waiting for us. And if the calling is true,
though we may not have gone where we intended, we will surely
end up where we need to be.

Steve Goodier

If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher
purpose, you probably want to rethink what you're doing.

Ronald Heifetz
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no
greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater
satisfaction than to have done it well.

Walter Reuther

Many of us have gotten so used to playing to the expectations
of society, of our families, of our friends, and of our minds, that
we don’t even allow ourselves to consider who we really are or
what we really need. We ignore the calls of our hearts, giving
our lives, instead, to the demands of an outside world built on
fitting in. We can stop this, right now. We can choose to listen
to ourselves, to heed our deepest callings, whatever they are.
We can give ourselves the freedom to be whoever the hell we
want to be in this world. Right now, if we choose to.
And why wouldn’t we?

Scott Stabile

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with.
We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

Abraham Maslow

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny,
unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine,
compared with the education of the heart.

Sir Walter Scott

Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your
profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such
passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

Virgil

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees. . . . The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life?

Richard Russo

If you don't walk your true path, you don't find your true people.
You end up in places you don't like, learning skills that don't fulfill
you, adopting values and customs that feel wrong.

Martha Beck
The Way of Integrity

A calling is the place where your gifts, abilities, desires, and feelings
of worth all meet. When you follow your calling, you feel at home,
at peace - you feel as though you're where you're meant to be.

Mike Yaconelli

Success to me means serving a calling higher than yourself that improves
the lives of everyone and is done completely in the name of service.

Jonny Kim

From the spiritual side:

authenticity - purpose

You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message
traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay,
any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic
needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it
will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may
pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education,
and compel it to point to the star which presides over poetry,
art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until
you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free,
the needle flied back to its own star.

Orison Swett Marden