The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side.
~ James Baldwin

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
~ Honore De Balzac

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.
~ Thomas Carlyle

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
~ Charles Horton Cooley

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.
~ Elvis Costello

Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
~ John Dryden

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
~ Cliff Fadiman

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
~ William Hazlitt

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
~ William Hazlitt

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
~ William Hazlitt

To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.
~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
~ Mother Teresa

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
~ Mother Teresa

Once you get into this great stream of history you can't get out. You can drown. Or you can be pulled ashore by the tide. But it is awfully hard to get out when you are in the middle of the stream -- if it is intended that you stay there.
~ Richard M. Nixon

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
~ David Ogilvy

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else -- building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
~ Jimmy Page

When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs.
~ Molly Ringwald

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Don't worry if your job is small and your rewards few. Remember that the mighty oak was once a nut like you.
~ Anonymous

My job is quite suitable for full-time mothering
~ Mare Winningham