"Vocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store, And 't was in my vocation For their recreation That so I should sing; Because I was Laureate To ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... therein. They talk much of the union of the will and understanding, but all is mere phantasy and folly. The right and true speculation is this: "Believe in Christ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation," etc. This is the only practice in Divinity. Also, Mystica Theologia Dionysii is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's Fables. Omnia sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens-All is something, and all is nothing; and so he leaveth all hanging ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... dying lay confusedly together. A few, slightly wounded, stood at windows, relating incidents of the battle; but at the doors sentries stood with crossed muskets, to keep out idlers and gossips. The mention of my vocation was an "open sesame," and I went unrestrained, into all the largest hospitals. In the first of these an amputation was being performed, and at the door lay a little heap of human fingers, feet, legs, and arms. I shall not soon forget the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... without ten guineas and a watch about them, on pain of death. In bad times, when there is little or nothing to be got on the roads, these fellows assemble in gangs, to raise contributions even in London itself, and the watchmen seldom trouble themselves to interfere with them in their vocation." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... secret! Now, look at me. I'm no saint, and I've come here to make a clean breast of that fact. When I was born, Uncle Sam said to me, 'Cyril P. Harkness, you're a son of mine, and it's your vocation to worship the God of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Almighty Dollar'; and I piped up, 'Right you are, uncle.' I was only a baby then." He added these last words reflectively, as if pondering on the reminiscence, and gained the object ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of who knows whom, contemplating but II now a vocation so ignoble, shall soon be admired and envied of all, with honour and praise and the fame of high achievement, respected by the high-born and the affluent, clothed as I am clothed' (and here she pointed to her ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... see, my dear, the church is his profession, not his vocation. He is a brilliant pulpit orator, with influential friends; but every brilliant pulpit orator is not necessarily a saint. And as for his quarreling with his wife and ill-using their step-daughter, we have heard but one side of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... offered. This person never died, but when tired of his sway on earth, he nominated a successor, and killed himself; a step, doubtless, prompted by the zeal of his followers, when they saw any danger of his reputation for immortality being compromised. This class argued strongly in favour of their vocation, as not only useful, but absolutely essential, since without it the earth would be deprived of those influences, by which alone it was enabled to minister to the wants of man. The people accordingly viewed, with the deepest alarm, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... consider that he entirely mistakes his vocation. When I want preaching I'll apply to the theological faculty. From the medical profession I expect strengthening. Thiel seems to confound salve with sanctity. That ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... do not know whether she expected you to turn sempstress immediately for the colony—or whether she intended you for another vocation, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... may be extended in its omen unto me; let me hope that as my encountering with the mercantile Brown brought me ill-luck in my enterprise, thereby signifying the crosses and vexations of those who labour in the cheateries and overreachings which constitute the vocation of the world; so my meeting with the philosophical Cole, who has, both in vagrancy and rest, found cause to boast of happiness, authorities from his studies to favour his inclination to each, and reason to despise what he, with Sir ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Talbot, cocoa for Mr. Greenwood, cambric tea for Mrs. Hastings, and hot water for the Darlings. I have to keep a schedule, and refer to it three times a day. This alone shows that boarders are n't my vocation." ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... congregations, nuns and convents, but submissive to the laws of the country and obliged to admit in their bosom as formerly happened in these isles, as estimable and superior members of such institutions, those feel a vocation for a conventual life, as the noble and generous people of North America will demand, and will, do not doubt it, recognize these your ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... which our meat is roasted, is a contrivance to enable the cook in a few minutes to exert a force which the machine retails out during the succeeding hour in turning the loaded spit; thus enabling her to bestow her undivided attention on the other important duties of her vocation. A great number of automatons and mechanical toys moved by springs, may be classed under ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... energy in his vocation is to be found in the little collection of cases entitled Examples of the Interposition of Providence, in the Detection and Punishment of Murder, published, with Preface and Introduction, in April 1752, and prompted, as advertisement ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... differs from this church in having no secular priests, but only regulars; all its clergy are monks, taking the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their vows, however, are not irrevocable; they can relinquish the yellow robe, and return into the world, if they find they have mistaken their vocation. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the choicest. Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to rest now ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Jesus Christ loves every human being individually, cares for each and has a specific vocation for each one to fulfil. This doctrine of the equal preciousness in the sight of GOD of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because GOD is love, and fellowship ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... as much of the "famae sacra fames" as of the "auri;" of the hungering after distinction, as well as of the appetite of gain. Enamored of his vocation, Turpin delighted to hear himself designated as the Flying Highwayman; and it was with rapturous triumph that he found his single-handed feats attributed to a band of marauders. But this state of things could not long endure; his secret was blown; the vigilance of the police was aroused; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... excellent man," replied Mr. Draper; "he is born to be a farmer, and nothing else. I have no wish to change his vocation; he dignifies it by uniting intelligence with manual labor; but there are many who are toiling merely for money, and they can get much more ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... he was not passing from one thing to another. In this country politics and law are closely allied. This two-fold pursuit, politics, for the sake of law, and law for the sake of politics, constituted Lincoln's vocation for the rest of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... get shot in a ravine; or go to the Devil in his own way, as long as he lost the track of Dona Rita completely. He then, probably, would get mad and get shut up, or else get cured, forget all about it, and devote himself to his vocation, whatever it was—keep a shop and grow fat. All this flashed through my mind in an instant and while I was still dazzled by those comforting images, the voice of Dona Rita pulled me up with ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... prayer, thought, and effort. Beyond question He was trained to labor, for idleness was abhorred then as it is now; and every Jewish boy, whether carpenter's son, peasant's child, or rabbi's heir, was required to learn and follow a practical and productive vocation. Jesus was all that a boy should be, for His development was unretarded by the dragging weight of sin; He loved and obeyed the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the archbishop, that he should remove from his side the said Fray Raymundo; [58] and another for the father provincial of St. Dominic, that he should send the said religious to the remote parts of the missions in charge of his order, agreeably to the purpose and vocation for which he had come to these islands at the cost ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... the prince's ear, who, close beside him, listened without losing a syllable, "since you are placed here, monseigneur, in order to learn your vocation of a king, listen to a piece of infamy—of a nature truly royal. You are about to be a witness of one of those scenes which the foul fiend alone conceives and executes. Listen attentively,—you will find ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the subjects that we teach to care to be students in these fields, or to find enjoyment in further work or activity along these lines, either as a matter of recreation or, not infrequently, as a means of discovering their true vocation in life. That teacher who has aroused sufficient interest in music to enable the student of musical ability to venture all of the hard work which may be necessary in order to become a skillful musician, has made possibly his greatest contribution by arousing interest or creating enthusiasm. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Americans style a "good teacher"—was not so much as an afterthought in the minds of those who gave him his call. The explanation of this disregard of the personal element in the professorial character is obvious. The professor is not called upon to teach. It does not constitute any part of his vocation to spur up the sluggish, to keep the idle busy, to give each student enough to do, and make first principles perfectly clear to all. So far from coming down to the level of the students, the professor expects ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... to the son, animating his zeal for knowledge, and pointing out how amply it might be gratified should he agree to take holy orders, he found the same repugnance which Dame Elspeth had exhibited. Edward pleaded a want of sufficient vocation to so serious a profession—his reluctance to leave his mother, and other objections, which the Sub-Prior ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... are altogether mistaken. In the first place, the prize-fighters seldom sustain serious injury. Their weapons do not endanger life; and as each one knows that his adversary is merely following his vocation, they often fight without animosity. After the contest is over, you may commonly see the combatants walking and talking very sociably together: but as this circumstance makes them a little suspected by the public, they affect the greater ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... preserved, from joining heart and hand our common forces to effect it? When the cry goes out that the ship is in danger of sinking, the first duty of every man on board, no matter what his particular vocation, is to lend all the strength he has to the work of keeping her afloat. What! shall it be said that we waver in the view of those who begin by trying to expunge the sacred memory of the fourth of July? Shall we help them to obliterate the associations that cluster around the glorious struggle ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... to treat of all those mercies that of necessity will be found to stand upon that which is called mercy from everlasting, yet it will be to our purpose, and agreeable to our method, to conclude that mercy to everlasting stands upon that; even as vocation, justification, preservation, and glorification, standeth upon our being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Rom 8:29,30). Here then is the mercy that is with God and that should encourage ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "intoxicated barbarian." It is since Byron that we Continentalists have learned to study Shakespeare and other English writers. From him dates the sympathy of all the true-hearted amongst us for this land of liberty, whose true vocation he so worthily represented among the oppressed. He led the genius of Britain on a ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... in the same hole from whence you withdrew it, to tug at it with all your might, apparently making as much progress as though you were fast to a dock-wall, and to continue this fun for four or five hours at a stretch, is to wonder indeed whether you have not mistaken your vocation. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... if they don't trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... were laid, immediately after high mass, the first five stones. There had been chosen the name of the Purification, because this day was the anniversary of that on which MM. Olier and de la Dauversiere had caught the first glimpses of their vocation to work at the establishment of Ville-Marie, and because this festival had always remained in high honour among the Montrealers. The foundation was laid by M. de Courcelles, governor-general; the second stone had been reserved ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... increased by his newly acquired freedom to do what he liked with himself, turned his mind at once towards travelling. Travel he must if he was ever to take up public and parliamentary life, and for no other profession—so he announced—did he feel the smallest vocation. Moreover, economy was absolutely necessary. During his absence the London house could be let, and Lady Tressady could live quietly at Ferth upon an allowance, while his uncles ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... help feeling all the time that my vocation was one of peace, and that I had no business to be where I was. That is not a pleasant sensation. The great thing for a man to feel in time of danger is that he is at his post and doing his duty. As I was in for it, I determined to do my best to ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... under the blue vault of heaven. You only look at one side of the picture, and that quickly vanishes away; mine, unhappily, is too real to be wiped out quickly." The old man spoke in a tone he had not hitherto used, which showed that his education had been superior to that which men of his vocation generally possess. ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... small income from investments, just sufficient to keep him from actual want, almost always prefers to find some paid work in order to be able to afford luxuries. So it would be, presumably, in such a community as we are imagining. At the same time, the man who felt a vocation for some unrecognized work of art or science or thought would be free to follow his desire, provided he were willing to "scorn delights and live laborious days.'' And the comparatively small number of men with an invincible horror of work—the sort of men who now ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... role, cue; province, function, lookout, department, capacity, sphere, orb, field, line; walk, walk of life; beat, round, routine; race, career. office, place, post, chargeship[obs3], incumbency, living; situation, berth, employ; service &c. (servitude) 749; engagement; undertaking &c. 676. vocation, calling, profession, cloth, faculty; industry, art; industrial arts; craft, mystery, handicraft; trade &c. (commerce) 794. exercise; work &c. (action) 680; avocation; press of business &c. (activity) 682. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to visit her at Peronne. The Duchess was accompanied by the Bishop of Arras, and the consequence was a full and secret negotiation between the two priests. It may be supposed that Philip's short-lived military ardor had already exhausted itself. He had mistaken his vocation, and already recognized the false position in which he was placed. He was contending against the monarch in whom he might find the surest ally against the arch enemy of both kingdoms, and of the world. The French monarch held ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... years of this century, such a linen weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation, in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... part in the talk at the table. Never a question was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of manners any inquisitiveness ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Burns is at his real vocation when addressing a great multitude. His energy finds an outlet in speech on those occasions, an outlet it can never find in the necessary routine of office administration. He was made for a life of action, and when once, in youth, he had thrown himself into ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... went into a sisterhood or a hospital, the tiny details would all be glorified by the halo which surrounds a vocation; it would all be part of a saintly life. Why is home not felt to be a vocation? Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother Superior? Ought not ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that association, and contain in germ ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... accompanied by the music of the wind-instruments. The second thing they did in the service of the holy relics was to institute a confraternity or congregation dedicated to those relics with the title and vocation of "all saints." Their object was, each beginning with himself and his own spiritual profit, to strive with all their might for the welfare of their neighbors, by performing works of mercy, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, as their opportunities permit—in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... a faire, and being flush (owing to his success as a thief, of which vocation he made a great deal, adding as many ciphers to the amounts as fancy dictated) Jean happened to cast his eyes in a store window where were displayed all possible appurtenances for the militaire. Vanity was rooted deeply in Jean's soul. The uniform ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... hardly knows when the young lady is supposed to be doing right and when doing wrong. The same puzzle occurs in the closing story, "Emily's Ambition," where the censurable point of the aspiration consists in being dissatisfied with the humbler vocation of school-teaching, and in pining after the loftier career of milliner, which in this community would seem like turning social ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... kept for Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, Oct. 20: "The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life; and I hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me Go in peace." Boswell reports him saying about this time, "Sir, I look upon every day to be lost when I do not make a ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... persiflage. Jim Galway, who is secretary of the association, will look after details of the permit and Bob Worther will turn the water on your land, and the whole town will assist you with advice! Luck, Sir Chaps, in your new vocation!" ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... this prison, or rather, if I escape the guillotine, I shall go to some foreign land and there, resuming the vocation to which I have consecrated myself, I shall pass the remainder of my life in a convent where I shall pray for you. But I shall not take the vows of eternal seclusion from the world; and if, some day, you feel strong ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... begun to look upon the world with new eyes. Our minds have been turned upon ourselves. We compare ourselves with other races, not as black men, but as men, and we thirst for knowledge and for individual perfection. We have learned to reflect and to form conception of right and to determine our vocation in life. We have learned not to depend entirely upon public opinion, but also to help make it. We have learned that self must be overcome. We are studying self and we know by evolution great improvements have been made mentally, morally and materially. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... "the cloth" even there. How he knew my calling I do not know. The remark directed particular attention to me and I became unpleasantly conspicuous. Scowling glances were bent upon me by two or three of the ruffians, and one fellow made a profane remark not at all complimentary to my vocation—where at there was some coarse laughter. In the meantime I was conscious of being very hungry. My hunger, like that of a boy, is a very positive, thing at, least it was very much so in those days. Glancing toward the maimed and scarred ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... he threw the axe with so much violence that it entered the tree deep and stuck fast. From that moment all hesitation was over: tearing himself from his friends, he joined the troop. Because it was with all his force he decided what his vocation was to be, his comrades called him Sforza. He fought in more than one hundred battles, and, after having served in Rome and at Milan, he at an advanced age perished while endeavouring to save one of his own pages from drowning. He left ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... hold to its integrity, without relapsing into its former state of blind indifference to its high vocation, the cultivation of the power of Thought will go on steadily and surely, and the mind will become constantly more and more clarified from all folly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... during the time they were at work elsewhere, on their return to the same spot found them untouched. Hence, as Paris is known to abound with filoux, it may be inferred that the amor patriae had deadened in them the impulse of their ordinary vocation. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed;—it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who can speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... requirements; and special organs became necessary to administer it. In the measure that the legal relations and legal conditions gained in intricacy, a special class of people gathered shape, who made the study of the law their special vocation, and who finally had a special interest in rendering the law ever more complicated. Then arose the men learned in the laws, the jurists, who, due to the importance of the statutory law to the whole of society, rose to influential social ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... two," his friend said, when Frederick confirmed the newspaper account of his having witnessed the sinking of the Roland. "I believe you're a married man and have children and are living in Germany, and as an avocation are doing scientific work, while practising medicine as a vocation. You were thinking of everything else in the world but a trip to America, which never ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and were there now any necessity for continuing the pursuit, or the prospect of striking another coup, they would go on, even though the chase should conduct them into the defiles of the Rocky Mountains. To pursue and slay the savage is their vocation, their duty, their pastime ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... between Virginia City and Reno, traveling the distance in less than one hour. To accomplish this feat, he used a relay of fifteen horses. He was afterwards transfered to Idaho where he continued in a similar capacity on a one hundred mile run before quitting the service for a less exciting vocation. ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... duties: the milk had been put into the store-house until a dairy could be built up. A very neat bridge had been thrown across the stream, and every morning the two girls, generally attended by Henry, Alfred, or Captain Sinclair, crossed over, and soon became expert in their new vocation as dairy-maids. Altogether, things began to wear a promising appearance. Henry and Mr. Campbell had dug up as fast as Martin and Alfred cleared away the brushwood, and the garden had already been cropped with such ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Richelieu, he had a means, more certain than even Mdlle. d'Hautefort's pride, of separating her from Louis XIII.; Mdlle. de La Fayette, whilst quite a child, had serious ideas of becoming a nun; and scruples about being false to her vocation troubled her at court, and even in those conversations in which she reproached herself with taking too much pleasure, Father Coussin, her confessor, who was also the king's, sought to quiet her conscience; he hoped much from the influence she could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Prophecy. Just what the vocation of Noah bad been before his call to prepare for the flood we do not know. But after the flood, perhaps compelled by necessity, he became an husbandman. He had probably settled on the slopes or in the valleys of ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... For a long time her efforts seemed in vain. Augustine would make no profession of the Christian faith, but rather indulged in youthful dissipations. His best quality was his love of study. He became a teacher of rhetoric, and pursued his vocation in one city and another, always dissatisfied with his life. At length, in his thirtieth year, he came to Milan, where he fell under the influence of Bishop Ambrose. Then followed a mighty struggle in his soul, and in the end he yielded himself joyfully as a disciple ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... example of the truth of that political dogma which teaches the efficacy of the division of labor. No manufacturer of the head of a pin ever attained greater dexterity in his single-minded vocation than was reached by my father in the one pursuit to which he devoted, as far as human ken could reach, both soul and body. As any sense is known to increase in acuteness by constant exercise, or ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Latitude Strung about Creation Seeth one or more of us (Of one muster each of us), Diligent in that he does, Keen in his vocation. ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Hampton scheme of industrial training, and those who are thus initiated in a large view of their small opportunities are likely to find their way, not only to those occupations, which are still open at the top, but to those resources of happiness which are discovered when work has become a vocation, and labor has contributed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... came forth as usual at their Circes' pleading, guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man, apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression was melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... reviewer spoke of Colonel Macirone in no very measured terms. "For Murat," he said, "we cannot feel respect, but we feel very considerable pity. Of Mr. Macirone we are tempted to predict that he has little reason to apprehend the honourable mode of death which was inflicted on his master. His vocation seems to be another ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... I said, "is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry? It is for this, that you, brought up a dissenter, have gone over to ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... letter from one of the principal men of the law of Tehran, the Mollah Nadan, who was much in want of one who would act as half scribe and half servant; one, in short, who might be of good materials for a future mollah, and whom he would instruct in all that was necessary in that vocation.' ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... into the various details of service, it might be a good moment to speak of the unreasoning indignity cast upon the honorable vocation of a servant. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... It needed a man of genius and of Hawthorne's imaginative delicacy, to feel the propriety of such a figure as Hilda's and to perceive the relief it would both give and borrow. This pure and somewhat rigid New England girl, following the vocation of a copyist of pictures in Rome, unacquainted with evil and untouched by impurity, has been accidentally the witness, unknown and unsuspected, of the dark deed by which her friends, Miriam and Donatello, are knit together. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... before the arrival of J. B. Hobson's letter, I no more dreamed of chasing the unicorn than of trying for the Northwest Passage. Three seconds after reading this letter from the honorable Secretary of the Navy, I understood at last that my true vocation, my sole purpose in life, was to hunt down this disturbing monster and rid the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... wife, father of two boys and a girl, has the good taste to make no allusion to his past efforts. Eve had the sense to dissuade him from following his terrible vocation; for the inventor like Moses on Mount Horeb, is consumed by the burning bush. He cultivates literature by way of recreation, and leads a comfortable life of leisure, befitting the landowner who lives on his own estate. He has bidden farewell ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... That your Petitioner and his Fore-Fathers have been Sellers of Books for Time immemorial; That your Petitioners Ancestor, Crouchback Title-Page, was the first of that Vocation in Britain; who keeping his Station (in fair Weather) at the Corner of Lothbury, was by way of Eminency called the Stationer, a Name which from him all succeeding Booksellers have affected to bear: That the Station of your Petitioner and his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... decision. On the one hand I should please my father, and at the same time satisfy the desire that has of late sprung up for a more stirring life than that of the Church, and should be able to remain your comrade. On the other hand, I have always regarded the Church as my vocation, and did not like to go back from it, and moreover, although stronger than of old, I thought that I might never attain such health and strength as might render me a worthy knight, and feared that when tried I should be found wanting. Thus I ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... they made unsparing warfare; believing that the gifts of the Spirit ought never to be paid with money. They appointed committees to visit the sick, the afflicted, and the destitute, and to superintend marriages and funerals. The farmer, the shoemaker, the physician, or the merchant, followed his vocation diligently, and whenever the Spirit moved him to exhort his brethren, he did so. The "First, and Fifth Day" of the week, called by other denominations Sunday and Thursday, were set apart by them for religious meetings. Women were placed on an ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtuous"—that was his vocation; to show that the mutual adaptation of the external world and the inner mind is able to shape a paradise from the "simple produce of the common day"—that was ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... in. There was not a stroke of work in the shop. I was so absorbed in my new vocation that I would pass my evenings in a cloak-makers' haunt, a caf on Delancey Street, where I never tired talking sleeves, pockets, stitches, trimmings, and the like. There was a good deal of card-playing in the place, but somehow I never succumbed to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... was not even an opera, or a celebrated musical composer, of which or of whom he could not point out the distinguishing merits and the chief compositions. Yet he was a hard-working, assiduous man of business, in his particular vocation, and a more regular, punctual, comprehensive, voluminous diplomatic correspondence than his no country can probably boast of; and it is thought the more necessary to note this fact, because sometimes an opinion prevails that ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... his profession daily increased; and, with his fame, his friends. Possessing the virtues of humility and charity far above William, who was the professed teacher of those virtues, his reverend brother's disrespect for his vocation never once made him relax for a moment in his anxiety to gain him advancement in the Church. In the course of a few years, and in consequence of many fortuitous circumstances, he had the gratification of procuring for him the appointment to a deanery; and thus at ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... and its own members. The election alone of the congregation was sufficient to bestow the sacerdotal character; and as all essential distinction was denied between the laity and the clergy, no ceremony, no institution, no vocation, no imposition of hands was, as in all other churches, supposed requisite to convey a right to holy orders. The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians led them to reject the authority of prelates, to throw off the restraint of liturgies, to retrench ceremonies, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs; and hence it is that diseased sympathy and compassion are every day expended on out-of-the-way objects, when only too many demands upon the legitimate exercise of the same virtues in a healthy state, are constantly within the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... knew he had it in him," "Found his vocation," "A distinctly clever head," "Reaping in the shekels"—that was the worst part. The "Moon," to a man, was bent on finding out "how much Sidney Price makes out of his bits in the papers." Some dropped hints—the G.M., Leach, and the men at the counter. Others, like Tommy ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... "no man has written as many volumes with so few sentences that can be quoted." Winged words were not his vocation; nothing urged him that way: the great mystery of existence was not great to him; did not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish. He had nothing of the martyr; into no "dark region to slay monsters for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... soon followed, and "imagine my delight," he writes, "in receiving one hundred dollars in cash! Though this song was not successful," he continues, "yet the two fifty-dollar bills I received for it had the effect of starting me on my present vocation of song-writer." In pursuance of this decision, he entered into arrangements with new publishers, chiefly with Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York, set himself to work, and began to pour out his productions with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... The Abbey and its domains comprise her world, beyond which she knows nothing, but within which she has ever conducted herself with native shrewdness and old-fashioned honesty. When Lord Byron sold the Abbey her vocation was at an end, still she lingered about the place, having for it the local attachment of a cat. Abandoning her comfortable housekeeper's apartment, she took shelter in one of the "rockhouses," which ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the Conversion of Bacon, "the event which had a greater influence than any other upon his character and future course. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated him . . . an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations." ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... of salvation—as [Greek: basileia tou theou] and as [Greek: aphtharsia]—being expected from the future, the whole present possession of salvation might be comprehended under the title of vocation ([Greek: klesis]) see, for example, the second Epistle of Clement. In this sense gnosis itself was ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... clear that when Spenser appeared in London, he had found out his powers and vocation as a poet. He came from Cambridge, fully conscious of the powerful attraction of the imaginative faculties, conscious of an extraordinary command over the resources of language, and with a singular gift of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... conflict, but the young girl obediently abandons herself to it, and, from motives of self-interest, suffers in silence. Her obedience is a speculation; her complaisance is a hope; her devotion to you is a sort of vocation, of which you reap the advantage; and her silence is generosity. She will remain the victim of your caprices so long as she does not understand them; she will suffer from the limitations of your character until she has studied it; she will ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... a street lamp. She had flushed with pleasure,—that had been six months ago,—when it first occurred to her that to be the wife of a distinguished clergyman, who was also a scholar, was the highest vocation to which a woman could aspire. She had told her father of this testimony to the ability of the rector of St. Chad's—pride had been in her voice ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... was twice married; his second wife was the widow of a Highland gentleman, and he was induced to hope that his condition might thus be permanently improved. He therefore relinquished his original vocation, and commenced the study of physic, with the view of obtaining an appointment as surgeon in the public service; but his sanguine hopes proved abortive, and, to complete his mortification, his wife left him in Edinburgh, and sought a retreat in the Highlands. He again procured some employment ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... energies on any one pursuit. He sought for success in various fields and never found it, and he died soon after his son, George Canning, was born. The mother of the future statesman was thus left a widow while she was still young, and, as she had great beauty and believed that she had a vocation for the stage, she did her best to make a living for herself and her child by becoming a professional actress. She was not much of an actress, however, and, being unable to make any mark in London, she passed for a time into the provinces, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Apology for Idlers demanded from him anything but idling. As Graham Balfour says, in his Life of Stevenson, I, 122, "Except before his own conscience, there was hardly any time when the author of the Apology for Idlers ever really neglected the tasks of his true vocation." In July 1876 he wrote to Mrs. Sitwell, "A paper called 'A Defence of Idlers' (which is really a defence of R.L.S.) is in a good way." A year later, after the publication of the article, he wrote (in August 1877) to Sidney Colvin, "Stephen has ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was there also; his crozier was different in shape from the rest, and as an addition to his silken cassock he wore a train. He was accompanied by his daughter. Daring in her assertion of the vocation which had withdrawn her from the gaieties of life she wore the gray robe of a ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... whether they served their purpose well or not, struck me as being very unworthy of the times we lived in, and seemed to show that the British fruit-growers, who were ahead of the world in all other matters connected with their vocation, had quite neglected this one point. A thousand years ago cultivators of the soil were scaring the birds from their crops just as we are doing, with methods no better and no worse, putting up scarecrows and old ragged garments and fluttering rags, hanging a dead crow to a stick to warn the others ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... same instant, their owne most prouident and godly decrees, which they had deuised for the honest cariage of euery particular person in their degrees and vocation, were made knowen to all men, and published in sundry writings, with diuers great punishments, set downe and appointed for the wilfull offenders and brekers of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... bygone days was invariably accompanied by the "organ pumper," often by several of them. There is a well-known story of how the man refused to blow any longer unless the organist said that "we had done very well to-day." The organ pumper's vocation is now almost entirely gone, especially in this country, although we know of organs in England which require four men "to blow the same" unto ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... in 1889, I took up, with a great deal of zeal, the study of the poet Browning. I had already yielded to the charm of Ruskin—whom I personally knew—and Carlyle, but Browning opened up a new world of elevated thought to me, in which I am still a happy dweller. In seeking a new vocation I naturally gravitated towards several lines of thought and study, all of which have influenced materially my later life, and all of which I pursued with the devotion accorded only to hobbies. These were I: A deeper study of ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... abuse against each other?' and so you go on reviling us for our ungodly quarrels, our sectarian propensities, and scandalous differences. It will, however, give you no trouble to write another article next week in which we, or some of us, shall be twitted with an unseemly apathy in matters of our vocation. It will not fall on you to reconcile the discrepancy; your readers will never ask you how the poor parson is to be urgent in season and out of season and yet never come in contact with men who think widely differently from him. You, when you condemn this foreign treaty, or that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... blasphemies. Then he burst into a tirade on things and usages pertaining to chivalry, a discourse so saturated with knowledge that it called forth a cry of astonishment, a wail of disappointment, and a sigh of pity from the niece, to whom it suddenly seemed that her uncle had missed his vocation in life when he did not become ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nature spoke of love, more than ever did Nora Sullivan's thoughts turn toward the large grove of trees to the westward in the midst of which Wilhelm Klingenspiel had his home and carried on his pleasant and harmless vocation of raising African geese. The evening song of the geese, tempered and sweetened by distance, came to her, accompanied by the most extraordinary booming and racketing of frogs which is to be heard outside of the tropical ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... to be told that we seemed manlier rather than younger than we were. But on this let us further consult our poet. He tells us that at ten begins the age of the whining school-boy; at twenty of the lover, sighing like a furnace, and that of the soldier, a vocation of manhood, at thirty.[13] To me it seems very clear that the rich poetic fancy of this Sonnet would be greatly lessened by assuming it to be addressed to a person below twenty-five years of age, and if it came, as may hereafter appear, from a person of fifty years ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... come to have a meaning which must be challenged, but yet it can be used in a sense that is both high and sacred. If a gifted writer take literature as a great vocation and determine to use his talents faithfully and well, without reference to fee or reward; if prosperity cannot seduce him to the misuse of his genius, then we give him our high praise. Let it still not be forgotten that the labourer is worthy of his hire. But if the hire is not forthcoming, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... like other artists, in that they are apt to get careless of everything except their vocation. They are similarly quite unreliable in their affections. They are not good watch dogs, and take little interest in chasing cats. They look on a little dog that catches rats much as a great musician looks on a cricketer—it's clever, ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... tidings of great joy" to every human being. And these two are "generally necessary," i.e. necessary for all alike—they are generaliter, i.e. for all and not only for special states (such as Holy Orders): they are "for every man in his vocation and ministry". The other five are not necessarily essential for all. They have not all "the like nature of Sacraments of the Gospel," in that they were not all "ordained by Christ Himself". It is the nature of the two Sacraments of the Gospel ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... self-possession of voice and feature which characterized the king. He had not the mind of Robert, and consequently the uppermost passion of the spirit was ever the one marked on his brow. On this morning he was all animated smiles, for war was alike his vocation ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the first glance, that she could fix the attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher, until she came to the words, "Lost!—Sinners!" when there was a great change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts that showed ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the Kshatriya; and to tend (cattle), that of the Vaisya, while to serve the twice-born orders is said to be the duty of the Sudra. The Sudras cannot beg alms, or perform homas, or observe vows; and they must dwell in the habitation of their masters. Thy vocation, O son of Kunti, is that of the Kshatriya, which is to protect (the subjects). Do thou carry out thy own duties, in an humble spirit, restraining thy senses. That king alone can govern, who taketh counsel of experienced men, and is helped by honest, intelligent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of life, shrugging herself closely in her old scarlet cloak, which had served her well for better than half a century, she would, with much apparent gusto, recount to her pleased auditory how many a time and often she had made the "penny come quick," by the above-recited inexpensive vocation; until at length her saying became a by-word in the neighbourhood, and universal consent fixed on the ever-happy octogenarian's triplet as a fitting appellation for the then nameless and retired little nook, but now thickly studded ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... blessed in home and hearth, this has become my fundamental creed of life, the basis on which all good, whether of art or of morality, is rested: of art especially; for only by a tender, reverent spirit can the true meaning of his vocation be made known to the artist. All the rest is mere imitation of form, not insight into essence. And while I feel that I can live out of myself, and love others—the whole world of man—more than myself, I know that I possess the secret of happiness; ay, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... He was then busy at his task of seeing life in London. He seems to give about one-third of the year to the tasting of all the heterogeneous sensations which London can provide for the connoisseur and two-thirds to the exercise of his vocation in some withdrawn spot in Cornwall that nobody save a postman or so, and Mr. Walpole, has ever beheld. During one month it is impossible to 'go out' in London without meeting Mr. Walpole—and then for a long period ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... were no nurses recognized as a class in the land, but when watching and the care of the sick were among those offices of Christian life which the families of a neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early youth she had obeyed a special vocation as sister of charity in many a sick-room, and, with the usual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works. Her legends of nursing in those days of long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... writing-master in the capital; and the same day, after having, from his little savings, bought a knife with four blades, a packet of quills, and two copy-books, set himself to the work. The good Oratoriens were not deceived as to the true vocation of young Buvat. Caligraphy was with him an art which almost became drawing. At the end of six months, like the ape in the Arabian Nights, he wrote six kinds of writing; and imitated men's faces, trees, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... broker, a vocation which he practised in Wall Street. Early on the following afternoon, while returning from there, he sat wedged between a gunman and a Hun. He was unconscious of either. The uncertain market; the slump, momentarily undiscernible, but mathematically inevitable; customers, credulous ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the Lutaya. It is a nation common to these islands of Mindanao, Jolo, and Basilan. In all these islands it preserves the name of Lutao, for since that is their vocation it well explains their nature. For Lutao means, in those languages, "he who swims and goes floating over the water." Such is the nature of these people that they know no other house than the ship. In the villages ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... strength which makes his literary vocation a mere chance, and what seems very contemptible to him. I could think only of an enormous trip-hammer with an ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was indeed something rather incongruous in Lucy's moral outburst over Mr. Eager. It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman's power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain approval. He ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... now nominal proprietor of Les Pres, assisted by his son and Cocotte, set to work manfully at his new vocation; and by dint of working twice as hard, and faring much worse than he did as a journeyman ferblantier, contrived to keep the wolf, if not far from the door, at least from entering in. His son, Le Bossu, was a cheerful, willing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... no more useful talent than the ability to think and speak (or write) clearly and simply, no matter what our vocation in life. None know better how difficult it is to find writers with a good narrative style than those editors whose training and experience have made them realize its value and importance. If we examine the experience of those ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... knowledge. And for this time, Monsieur, I shall content myself with praying you, for the honour and respect we owe to truth, to testify and believe that our Guienne never beheld his peer among the men of his vocation. Under the hope, therefore, that you will pay him his just due, and in order to refresh him in your memory, I present you this book, which will answer for me that, were it not for the insufficiency of my power, I would offer you as willingly ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and for many days to come Ringfield met the lady of his dreams at breakfast and at dinner; her third meal was served privately to her in her own room at a quarter to seven, and he wondered why until he remembered her vocation. Though at present not acting she evidently retained the habits of the profession, and for the first few days she continued to wear the scarlet silken and spangled drapery in which she had left the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... made it—by hard work, with a hundred other fellows doing their best to push me back on the side lines; I tried for the crew, and I made it; I rowed two years at New London, and there was some work about that. I'm afraid I made athletics my vocation and studies my avocation, but I tried to do what I undertook as well as I knew how, and some of the boys still think I'm ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... convent," I said, "for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... offended albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge even from all those that are here present: which is this. In the name of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as you tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ His kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that you take upon you the public office and charge of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... martyr for Christ. He compels himself to be satisfied with a measure of attention to his utterances, which would content no sane and sensible man in any other department of teaching. He will tell you that it is one of the inevitable infelicities of his vocation, that to nothing are men such unwilling listeners as to religious truth; than which nothing can be more untrue; for to nothing are men so prepared to listen as to religious truth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intended to be useful. Normal men and women are not content unless they are helpful. Hence we have our work or vocation. However, people who get into a rut, and they are liable to if they work all the time at one thing, lose efficiency. Therefore it is well to have an avocation or a hobby to sharpen mind ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... of complete dependence may be quite consistent with a great vocation—the call, that is, to a ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... with delight and pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread alone, but an outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament. To get the best and truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one and all; and they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as much inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to canvas. The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those masters of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... are caught in the blaze of the footlights, instantly enveloping them in fire, and burning them to a crisp,—and they are borne from the theatre to the grave. Yet these girls, thus nightly exposed to so frightful a death, are paid a third to a half less than men employed in the same vocation, and who by dress are exempt from such hazards. Moreover, the wardrobe of the men is furnished by the theatrical manager,—while the girls, those even who receive but five dollars a week, are compelled out of this slender sum to supply their own. They must change ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... my vocation will permit. I am, as Hamlet says, indifferent honest, when my clients and their solicitors do not make me the medium of conveying their double-distilled lies to the bench. But oportet vivere! it is a sad thing. And now to our ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her vocation had for a long time been dawning on her mind, but the way to go to Syria did not seem open, and the Lord had other work for her. Almost by the same post there arrived two letters, one from Mrs. Ranyard, so well known ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound and wise ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... as it did others and he even contemplated writing a political overture. The fantastic ideas prevalent at that time among the students at the university, which in the meantime he had entered to complete his general education, and fit himself thoroughly for the vocation of a musician, tended still further to divert his mind from the serious task before him. At this juncture, both for his own welfare and that of art, a kind Providence sent him a man, who, sternly yet kindly, as the storm subsided, directed the awakening impulse for order ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... transferring to the young lord's "candour" the praise he had so thanklessly bestowed on his morals in general; adding, that from the design Lord Byron had expressed in his preface of resigning the service of the Muses for a different vocation, he had "conceived him bent on pursuits which lead to the character of a legislator and statesman;—had imagined him at one of the universities, training himself to habits of reasoning and eloquence, and storing up a large fund of history and law." It is in reply to this letter that the exposition ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... symbol to teach him that as soon as he has passed beyond the years of irrational childhood, and commenced his entrance upon manly life, the laborious task of self-improvement is the first duty that is placed before him. He cannot stand still, if he would be worthy of his vocation; his destiny as an immortal being requires him to ascend, step by step, until he has reached the summit, where the treasures of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... of trout for which he had whipped one of the mountain brooks, and which furnished the family with the choicest sort of a meal. The father complimented him on his skill, for that was before the parent's patience had been so sorely tried by the indifference of the lad toward the vocation to which the elder meant he should devote his life. He left the lad at liberty to spend the rest of the day as he chose, and, early in the afternoon, he proposed to his sister that they should engage in that old game ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... in a panorama. The mind becomes entranced, and when sober reflection regains her command, we naturally inquire, Can all this have taken place in my heart? Then the armies of Diabolus, with his thousands of Election Doubters, and as many Vocation Doubters, and his troops of Blood-men—thousands slain, and yet thousands start into existence. And all this in one man! How numberless are our thoughts—how crafty the approaches of the enemy—how hopeless and helpless is the sinner, unless Immanuel undertakes his recovery. The Holy War is a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... their net, and James and his brother John mending theirs, and called them to come with Him. These fishermen, with their frank and free hearts unspoiled by the sophistries of the Pharisees, with their minds unhampered by social and political ambitions, followers of a vocation which kept them out of doors and reminded them daily of their dependence on the bounty of God,—these children of nature, and others like them, were the men whom He chose for His disciples, the listeners who had ears to hear His ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... in its better and softer parts, by the quiet respectfulness of Mrs. Thornly's demeanour, who never forgot that she had experienced her protection in the hour of need, and by the irresistible good-nature of Cicely, a smiling, rosy, sunny-looking creature, whose only vocation in this world seemed to be the trying to make everybody ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... covetousness. But the love of power also plays a part in the debauchery of citizenship; and the central sin of using men as means to our ends is exhibited here on a stupendous scale. This is the vocation of the boss and the briber and the political machinist; and a deadlier way of destroying manhood it would be hard to find. It is not only the interest of other individuals, but the interest of the whole community that the corrupt politician sacrifices ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... life—love of Jefferson Doman, who had once been of some service to him, and love of whisky, which certainly had not. He had been among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, but had not prospered, and had sunk by degrees to the position of grave digger. This was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some local misunderstanding at the card table and his own partial recovery from a prolonged debauch occurred coincidently in point ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the time before the line to Oxford from Wolverhampton and Worcester was built, when persons visiting Oxford from the Vale of Evesham had to travel by road. An old yeoman family, having decided upon the Church as the vocation for one of the sons, sent him, in the year 1818, on an old pony, under the protection of an ancient retainer for his matriculation examination. On their return, in reply to the question, "Well, did you get ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... moral influence of art. And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of form and not a novel reading of historical events, mark the vocation of the writer and the painter. The arabesque, properly speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the artist; he first plays with his material as a child plays with a kaleidoscope; and he is already in a ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been as unfruitful in literature as is often supposed. While there have been very few to make literature a vocation, a surprisingly large number have made it an avocation. Law and literature, as we shall have occasion to note, have frequently gone hand in hand. A recent work on Southern literature [*] enumerates more than twelve hundred ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... as, with clenched fist, he stood seeming about to spring upon me; "I admit no such right, especially of an Englishman. The English have ever been my most implacable enemies. Because, forsooth, I choose to earn my living by following a vocation of which some of them disapprove, they must needs do their utmost to ruin me, and by heaven they have very nearly succeeded, too! Who are they that they should presume to thrust their opinions down the throats of other people? If their own countrymen choose to be led by the nose and are willing ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... he chose to remain among them, it was with deep regret that we parted from him and Nita and their child. He was too sensible to ask me to remain with him, feeling that, as a civilised man, I had my vocation elsewhere. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... some half-dozen jailers, attired in garments of dark-brown frieze, and each having a large bunch of keys at his girdle. All of them were stout, hard-featured men, and bore upon their countenances the stamp of their vocation. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... with the passing years," said Kellogg, in a moralizing tone, which recalled his former vocation. "Now you are a man, and we meet here on the other side of the continent, on the banks of the Yuba River. I hope we are destined to ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... youth, Miguel Jose evinced an ardent desire to enter the priesthood and displayed a zealous missionary spirit. His pious parents placed no obstacle in the way of their gentle boy's vocation, and being too poor to pay for his education, the Church did it for them. At the age of sixteen, Miguel Jose left his father's small estate and began his studies in his native village, completing them at the Franciscan ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... transition is easy to the reckless and vicious Bahrdt. This man stands among the first of those who have brought dishonor upon the sacred vocation. What Jeffreys is to the judicial history of England, Bahrdt is to the religious history of German Protestantism. Whatever he touched was disgraced by the vileness of his heart and the satanic daring of his mind. He heard theological lectures. Thinking that in this field he could infuse ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... woman of easy virtue who is sometimes seen behind the footlights and helps to give the theatre a bad name. Although destitute of the slightest histrionic talent, she styles herself an "actress" in order to better conceal her true vocation. As a class, the earnest, hardworking men and women who devote their lives to the dramatic art are entitled to the highest regard and respect. No profession counts in its ranks more virtuous women, more honorable men than the artists who give lustre ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... conceited, but I know my own powers, and I intend that other people shall know them too. Education is my sphere, and I intend to devote my life to the advancement of my sex. Pass the cake, someone! I haven't had half enough. Yes, my vocation is among women. You will hardly believe me, my dears, but men don't seem to appreciate me, somehow! There is a 'Je-ne-sais-quoi' in my beauty which doesn't appeal to them a mite. But girls adore me. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with the hair. So, among ourselves, the great athletic resources of the female frame are vindicated by every equestrian goddess of the circus, every pet of the ballet. Those airy nymphs have been educated for their vocation by an amount of physical fatigue which their dandy admirers may well prefer to contemplate through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... poet. Possibly I thought the trade was a bad one for a second son who must support himself. It is more probable that I instinctively felt that although it was so great a source of joy to me, poetry was not my true vocation. Perhaps, also, I had already begun to note the voice of pessimism raised by the poets of the 'seventies, and to feel that they did not believe in themselves. I distinctly remember that Tennyson's "Is there no hope for modern rhyme?" was often on my lips and in my mind. His question distinctly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey |
