Vocation Quotes - Page 9

• In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Integrity, Teaching

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• That's enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Aunt, Circles, Godmother

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.

  Cornel West

  Blessed, Thinking, Joy

  "Cornel West, 'Living And Loving Out Loud'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. October 29, 2009.

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• There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them - isn’t this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

  Vaclav Havel

  Intellectual, Doubt, Slumber

  "Words on Words" by Vaclav Havel, www.nybooks.com. January 18, 1990.

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• I think there are a lot of closet charismatics out there. A lot of [clergy] personally have had their vocations saved because of their experience of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the renewal, but they discovered it wasn't cool [to say so out loud] because it was considered fringe. They got the message from the environment not to talk about it very much. I think the time has come for the closet charismatics to come out.

  Ralph Martin

  Thinking, Messages, Spirit

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• Every person has his or her own vocation-talent is the call.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Talent, Persons

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• Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man -- weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded!

  Marquis de Custine

  Lying, Heart, Men

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• More than we care about their "success," vocation, or financial status, our hearts will be encouraged when our kids are faithful followers of Christ, and our hearts will be distressed when our kids appear to reject the Christian faith. So, the most important thing is transferring our kids' allegiance from us to Christ, raising faithful disciples who seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

  Gary L. Thomas

  Christian, Kids, Heart

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• It is funny, and also a bit sad, that poets are so often asked to justify our vocation. There seems to be something vaguely mystifying and even hilarious to people about being a poet, especially in these times. Why would anyone choose to do something so...useless?

  Matthew Zapruder

  People, Poet, Justify

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There's a reason why trainspotters are not girls, there's a reason why there's the myth of the slightly autistic male genius, there's a reason why Gertrude Stein believed that her self-presentation was male. One could argue that was Susan Sontag also. The things that we associate with femaleness are not the single-minded, exclusive pursuit of a vocation, whether it be art or anything else. It is not a model that is widespread in our culture, it's not something we think of for women.

  Claire Messud

  Girl, Art, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

  James Hillman

  Past, Thinking, Calling

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Jobs, White, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation.

  Wole Soyinka

  Believe, Writing, Creativity

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

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• In a country lacking leaders, in Africa, for instance, how could a native educated in Europe refuse to become a professor, even at the price of his literary vocation?

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Country, Europe, Leader

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• I tried for about two semesters in a preparatory seminary. But I was about 15 and didn't fully understand what a vocation means.

  Martin Scorsese

  Mean, Two, Seminary

  Source: www.npr.org

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• When you're a female poet, would you, therefore, invoke a male muse? When nuns get consecrated into their vocations, they become brides of Christ. Christ is the bridegroom. In these symbolic actions, rather than in physical actions, where a male reaches sexuality or participates in intimate exchanges, if one uses a different term - there's often a heterosexual figuring that takes place. The male poet invokes a beautiful female muse. The virginal nun consecrated invokes the male bridegroom, Christ.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Beautiful, Males, Female

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation. One should seek out an audience that matters - and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively.

  Noam Chomsky

  Community, Important, Matter

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.

  Debra Dean

  Envy, Peculiar, Radical

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do.

  Dave Douglas

  Thinking, Musician, Want

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• Surely people can now see that it is no accident that he, Obama, sat at the feet of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, that he is mother was a leftist activist and cultural Marxist, that his main early mentor was radical Frank Marshall Davis, that he was a member of the far-left New Party in Chicago, that his main vocation in life has been street organizing and agitation and that he didn't think the revolutionarily, transformative Warren court was liberal enough.

  David Limbaugh

  Mother, Party, Thinking

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• Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations - projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves- and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, Self, People

  Parker J. Palmer (1999). “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation”, p.29, John Wiley & Sons

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• It is observable that God has often called men to places of dignity and honor when they have been busy in the honest employment of their vocation.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Men, Honor, Dignity

  Benjamin Franklin “Poor Richard Day by Day”, Lulu.com

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• Though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity is not an exciting vocation.

  Henry James

  Alarms, Might, Exciting

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• I've done everything. I've sung, done records, plays... It just so happened my first professional job was as a dancer. I've done the whole shebang, darling. But dancing was my first professional engagement in 1974. I got paid for it, so that was it, my vocation. But my parents weren't keen. They wanted me to be an accountant in Italy. Or a lawyer. They were furious. I had to run away. I had to leave the country.

  Bruno Tonioli

  Running, Country, Jobs

  "Interrogation: Strictly's Len and Bruno". Interview with Mirror, www.mirror.co.uk. April 6, 2008.

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• The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Duty, Latitude

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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