"Vocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mother Theresa knows no more than a baby; and they would take her in, and make her as white and as thin as that moon yonder now the sun has risen; and little good should I have of her, for I have no vocation for the convent,—it would kill me in a week. No,—she has seen enough of the convent for the present. I will even take the risk of watching her myself. Little has this gallant seen of her, though he has tried hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... when this was successfully achieved, human existence was raised above the laws of natural life. The principal of motherhood is common to all the spheres of animal life, but man goes beyond this tie in gaining pre-eminence in the process of procreation, and thus becomes conscious of his higher vocation. In the paternal and spiritual principle he breaks through the bonds of tellurism, and looks upwards to the higher regions of the cosmos. Victorious fatherhood thus becomes as distinctly connected with the heavenly light as prolific motherhood ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... was the old Castilian: and yet forsooth some are found to scoff at a noble and a loyal race because even at the plough they were lothe to lay aside the beloved sword, the instrument of their high vocation of patriotism and liberty. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... city of the middle west and of course started a laundry, since that seems to be the natural vocation of every Chinaman, be he coolie ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... stories are related of him, by the Mohammedans, in honour of their Prophet, or by the eastern Christians, in derision of the Impostor. He is said to have been a rich Greek priest, settled at Boszra, and to have predicted the prophetic vocation of Mohammed, whom he saw when a boy passing with a caravan from Mekka to Damascus. Abou el Feradj, one of the earliest Arabic historians, relates this anecdote. According to the traditions of the Christians, he was a confidential counsellor of Mohammed, in the compilation ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... holds communication with spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible—a great proof to the vulgar of his mystical vocation. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Young Allison is. Years ago—twenty-six to be exact—he took the dry old subject of insurance and week in and out made it sparkle with such wit and brilliancy that every-day editorials became literary gems which laymen read with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said to be his vocation—a sort of daily-bread affair, well executed, because one should not quarrel with his sustenance—with librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an avocation. Fate must have doomed his operas in the very ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... history; our Master never meant us to burn and torture men into faith. He desired us to love and lead them into the way of life as the shepherd leads a flock into the fold. I repeat again, there would have been no room for atheism if we—we—the servants of Christ, had been strictly true to our vocation." ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... your conclusion will be favorable," remarked Quincy. "In a short time you will be financially independent and freed from any necessity of returning to your former vocation. I never knew of an author so completely successful at the start, and I think you have every encouragement to make literature your ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Putnik. Unlike his younger colleagues, his military education was entirely a home product; he had never studied abroad. His father was one of those Serbs born on Austrian soil; he had emigrated from Hungary to Serbia in the early forties where he had followed the vocation of school-teacher. In 1847 the future general was born. After passing through the elementary schools, young Putnik entered the military academy at Belgrade. He had already attained a commission when the war of 1876 with Turkey broke out, through which he served ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Doctor Howe's lifelong work received comparatively slight recognition or reward. A few medals were sent to him from Europe,—a gold one from the King of Prussia,—and he was always looked upon in Boston as a distinguished citizen; but his vocation at the Blind Asylum withdrew him from the public eye, and the public soon forgets what happened yesterday. What a blaze of enthusiasm there was for Admiral Dewey in 1899, and how coldly his name was received as a presidential candidate one ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... former embodies the nobler side of the Jewish character,—its capacity for religious ideas; its elevation above, and separation from, the nations; its consciousness of, and peaceful satisfaction in, a divine Friend; its consequent vocation in the world. These all were deep in the founder of the race, and flowed to it from him. Jacob, on the other hand, has in him the more ignoble qualities, which Christian treatment of the Jew has fostered, and which have become ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... ambitious to lay up money for his wife's and children's sake, as well as to secure for himself the means of rest from labor in his more advancing years. The consequence was, that Andy served his neighbors, in his vocation, to their highest satisfaction. He was useful, ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... should be punished. They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood, and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set one's will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough for anything. There should be a prison where parents could put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... it a vocation," said Angela. "I have watched her ever since I have been here, and I am sure her soul is set on these best things, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism, woman has become man's equal, not through the ballot, but by her will to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue of learning and vocation, but she has won man's esteem, his respect, his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability, will power, and her endurance ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... experiments; give them a dignity, which should refuse to look forward to marriage as an end, while it would lead them to accept it gladly as a providential help. I did not fear that she would be untrue to her vocation, or easily forsake it for a more domestic sphere. She had not entered it, I could see, without measuring her own purpose and ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... in chains; and in a few days a negro was placed beside him, and here they swung, "blind and blackening," in the April air, in full view of the tranquil bay, a ghastly spectacle to the fishermen as they plied their vocation near by. For three weeks they dangled here in sunshine and storm, a terror to the passers-by. At length a rumor passed through the town that Hughson had turned into a negro, and the negro into a white man. This was a new mystery, and day after day ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... phrase, 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." {274a} The vocation, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... popularity for the time. They gave him also a distinct bent towards making literature his profession. But literature, however pleasant and occasionally profitable as an avocation, was not to be thought of as a vocation. Few there are at any period who have succeeded in finding it a substantial and permanent support; at that time and in this country such a prospect was practically hopeless for any one. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was it for Mr. Stark that Crom-a-boo was sure to lose; for had he won, Stark would have been a ruined man; nothing would have kept him from the Curragh and a conviction that the turf was his proper vocation. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Quirk had absolute confidence in the girl's vocation as a reformer. The old lady was never told of a good-for-nothing son or husband ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... men, now, who in their youth lived on the James River, in whose hearts the melody of Sidney Lanier's flute yet lingers in golden fire and dewy flowering. At Fort Boykin he decided the question of his vocation, writing to his father so eloquent a letter upon the desirability of pursuing his tastes, rather than trying to follow the paternal footsteps in a profession for which he had no talent, that his father relinquished all hope of making a lawyer ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... "that shall be fulfilled which, like Philo, I hope for, we shall be the priests and prophets for all nations. Then we shall in truth be a race of priests whose vocation it shall be to call down the blessing of the Most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Miss Ingelow's new volume exhibits abundant evidence that time, study, and devotion to her vocation have both elevated and welcomed the powers of the most gifted poetess we possess, now that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Adelaide Proctor sing no more on earth. Lincolnshire has claims to be considered the Arcadia of England at present, having ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... process of time his pupil gained the means of making what he pleased of himself; for his father having died, was not long survived by his eldest son, an arrant fisher and fowler, who departed this life, in consequence of a cold caught in his vocation, while shooting ducks in the swamp called Kittlefittingmoss, notwithstanding his having drunk a bottle of brandy that very night to keep the cold out of his stomach. Jonathan, therefore, succeeded to the estate, and with it to the means of subsisting without the hated drudgery of the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... by the door. Presently a sounding, confident step was heard along the passage, the library door swung back on its noiseless hinges, and in stalked a man of apparently about thirty-five years of age, tall, genteel, and soldier-looking. He started back on seeing me, recognizing, I perceived, my vocation, at a glance. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... 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 ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... chosen, but his very election binds him to vigorous service of truth and righteousness. "Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord." Only when Israel proves by the nobility of his life that he deserves his holy vocation will the accomplishment of his mission be at hand. When all the peoples of the earth shall see that he is worthily called by the name of the Lord, the Divine name and law will be near to the attainment of their destined empire over the hearts of men' (Judaism ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... assiduity, frequenting the theatres and Caves of Harmony, making many literary acquaintances, taking runs into the country to canvass for Charles Buller, and trying his 'prentice hand at journalism. His vocation for literature speedily damped his legal ardour, and drew him out of Mr. Tapsell's chambers, where he left a desk full of sketches and caricatures. In May 1832 he wrote: 'This lawyer's preparatory education is certainly one of the most cold-blooded, prejudicial ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... said, "Madame, your kindness penetrates my heart, but does not shake my resolution. I have resolved to quit the court. I have need of solitude. Do not force me to give up the vocation to ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Their ancient, venerable corporation, To send such a cheese as should honor the nation. So ended the solemn convocation; And, after due deliberation, The burgomaster made proclamation, Inviting people of every station, Each according to his vocation, With patriotic emulation To join in a general jubilation, And get up a cheese for the grand occasion. Then ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... for a great fortune. His father had been near enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... sum of forty-five livres tournois, making the value of twenty ecus of gold sol at forty-five sols apiece, of which we have made and do make by these presents donation, as much for her as for the other women and girls of her vocation, to divide among themselves as they may advise, and this for their right for ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... to the highlands, he entered on his new vocation with great assiduity; and, supported by an unusually strong constitution, he mapped a larger extent of territory than any other of the numerous surveyors employed on the work. There are yet in the archives of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the first article of the Solemn League, and by the National Covenant; wherein we promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God, that we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this kirk, and shall defend the same according to our vocation and power all the days of our lives, under the pains contained in the law, and danger both of body and soul in the day of God's fearful judgment, and resist all contrary error and corruptions, according to our vocations, and the utmost of that power God hath put in ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... 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 ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... priesthood insolently call the inferior clergy,—the unseen merit and the blind devotedness to be found amongst worthy, but obscure, country curates, who are inhumanly treated and subjugated to a pitiless yoke by the lordly lawnsleeves! Like us, those poor priests are worthy laborers in their vocation; and for them, also, all generous hearts ought to demand enfranchisement! Sons of common people, like ourselves, and useful as we are, justice ought to be rendered both to them and to us. Do I say right, Gabriel? You will not contradict it; for you have told me, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... close attention; and the sheep having been released, he was directed to capture in succession two or three more of the flock, which underwent similar treatment. The sagacious animal had now become initiated into the mysteries of his master's vocation, for off he set unbidden through the flock, and picked out with unerring precision those sheep which were affected with maggots in their skin, and held them down until the arrival of his master; who was thus, by the extraordinary instinct of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... failed to take firm hold upon the national taste, and died away before the growing passion for antiquity that restored the Italians to a sense of their own intellectual greatness. It is clear that, as soon as they were conscious of their vocation to revive the culture of the classic age, they at once and for ever abandoned the style appropriate to northern feudalism. They seem to have adopted it half-unwillingly and to have understood it only in the imperfect way in which ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Narva (1700) there were two surprises: one when Peter found that he knew almost nothing about the art of warfare, and the other when it was revealed to Charles XII. that he was a military genius and his natural vocation was that of a conqueror. But if Charles was intoxicated by his enormous success, Peter accepted his humiliating defeat almost gratefully as a harsh lesson in military art. The sacrifice of men had been terrible, but the lesson was not lost. The next year ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... enthusiasm swept him off his feet. However, after several plays had been finished, and his health seriously impaired by his endeavours to keep up with Mr. Henley, play writing was abandoned forever, and my husband returned to his legitimate vocation. Having added one of the titles, The Hanging Judge, to the list of projected plays, now thrown aside, and emboldened by my husband's offer to give me any help needed, I concluded to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all the enthusiasm of youth and a new vocation, was determined to make the entertainment a success. She spared no trouble over constant rehearsals, and having weeded out those girls who could not adapt themselves to her methods, she kept the rest well at work in any time that was available. She determined not only to have dances, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... more. In the exercise of his vocation, he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly. Although several years my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... come in, to the which she lived upwards of thirty years in credit and respect, although some thought she had not the art of her predecessor, and was more uppish in her carriage than befitted the decorum of her vocation. Hers, however, was but a harmless vanity; and, poor woman, she needed all manner of graces to set her out; for she was made up of odds and ends, and had but one good eye, the other being blind, and just like a blue bead. At first she plainly set her cap for ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... too early, it seems, to find you at your vocation. But how are you going to dispose of ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... my worthy fellow, my vocation summons me elsewhere. By the way, hast thou any apprentices or assistants ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... for its wounding than its healing properties, made great play. They were never tired of pointing out and ridiculing the rents in the stroller's coat; his shifts, trials, misfortunes, follies, were subjects for ceaseless derision. What Grub Street and "penny-a-lining" have been to the vocation of letters, strolling and "barn-strutting" became to the histrionic profession—an excuse for scorn, underrating, and mirth, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... worshipped for some fancied good, for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over bakers, another over ovens,—every vocation and every household transaction had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... especially as her heart was assailed 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 as happy ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... or statue, of which he did not know the details and the history; there 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 ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... into Lorraine, disappeared all at once, and ceased to write to his friends; they learned at a later period through Mme. de Chevreuse, who told it to two or three of her intimates, that, yielding to his vocation, he had retired into a convent—only into which, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the joyous Neapolitan, "for my wife is very fond of Capuchins, and if you wish to please her, you had better follow your original vocation." Our conversation continued in the same tone of pleasantry, and the day passed off in an agreeable manner; in the evening we had a very poor supper at Garillan, but we made up for it by cheerfulness and witty conversation. My dawning inclination for the advocate's wife borrowed strength ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty looking city editor, I am free to confess—coatless, slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I secured a more Christian costume and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... condemned by the public sentiment of the Country. Almost every body here appears to esteem it a condescension for her to open the Exhibition as though it were a Parliament, and with far more of personal exertion and heartiness on her part. And while I must regard her vocation as one rather behind the intelligence of this age and likely to go out of fashion at no distant day, yet I am sure that change will not come through her fault. I was glad to see her in the pageant to-day, and hope she enjoyed it while ministering ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... continued to be summoned by royal commission, but from the reign of Elizabeth the custom has been allowed to fall into abeyance. They have not been since summoned by royal authority, but were revived about 1822, and are held regularly at the present time. In modern Welsh, a bard is a poet whose vocation has been recognized at an Eisteddfod. In Ireland also the bards were a distinct class with peculiar and hereditary privileges. They appear to have been divided into three great sections: the first celebrated victories and sang hymns ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... should yet come from Avalon to save France in her black hour of need. All these he read aloud, suavely, with bland modulations, for he was a man of letters, as letters went in those days. Originally, he had been bred for the Church; but this vocation he had happily forsaken long since, protesting with some show of reason that France at this particular time had a greater need of ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... are partial and defective. Were our beloved Monarch to regard such of the gentlemen of her court as taboo their Glen Tilts, and shut up the passes of the Grampians, as a sort of disloyal Destructives of a peculiar type, who make it their vocation to divest her people of their patriotism, and who virtually teach them that a country no longer theirs is not worth the fighting for, it might be very safely concluded that she was but manifesting, in one other direction, the strong ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... safe to say that teachers enter upon their vocation without sufficient education. Our certificate requirements are low, and many enter upon teaching with little or no more schooling than that obtained in the schools where they begin teaching. Of course this ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... They could see in it God's glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ, and view their own faces in it, to their inexpressible joy. This is the river "the streams whereof make glad the city of God" (Psa. 46:4). The stream which flow from this river of electing love, are vocation to Christ, justification by Christ, sanctification in Christ, perseverance through Christ, glorification with Christ, and all joy and peace in believing on Christ. All this these pilgrims now enjoyed, and all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... completed. Tongues in the neighborhood wagged energetically for a few days; but presently the birth of twins in the next block distracted the public mind, and Elizabeth was allowed to resume the vocation of an inconspicuous schoolmistress. From the object of her bounty, Mr. Horace Barker, she heard nothing directly; but at least he had the grace to discontinue his persecutions. And parental confidence, which, in spite of scarlet-fever, had never been wholly lost, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... ways, poor men, in the name of God the Creator, to whom I pray to guide you perpetually, and henceforward be not so ready to undertake these idle and unprofitable journeys. Look to your families, labour every man in his vocation, instruct your children, and live as the good apostle St. Paul directeth you; in doing whereof, God, his angels and sancts, will guard and protect you, and no evil or plague at any time shall befall you. Then Gargantua led them into the hall to take their refection; but the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ancient capital. She had a vision of a companion who was to accompany her to a land of mists and mountains, to which the Virgin beckoned as the country of her future life-work. Canada was the land and Madame de la Peltrie the companion foreshadowed in that dream which gave Marie Guyard a vocation which she filled for thirty years ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... which led to a wider future were already opening. The professors at the Sorbonne appreciated his great intellect and originality. "You have a true vocation," said one. "Follow it. But go to the bar, where your voice, which is one in a thousand, will carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The lecture room is a narrow theater. If you like, I will write to your father to tell him what my opinion of you is." And ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... this proved a great increase to our comforts—that is our bodily wants; but my mind was far away. Amy Trevannion was never out of my thoughts, and I fell into a deep melancholy. I worked hard at my vocation, and was fortunate enough to find some good diamonds, long before I had been a year at the mines. Having acquired the Portuguese language, I was soon after raised to the office of superintendent. I now no longer worked, but overlooked others, with a cane in my hand to ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... of Latitude Strung about Creation Seeth one (or more) of us, (Of one muster all of us— Of one master all of us—) Keen in his vocation. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... 'Not feeling any vocation for the character of prophet, I shall take care not to recount here, in advance, events that are about to happen. I marvel at people who are so sure of their facts. The future has not the least obscurity for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... perhaps, amongst other more obvious purposes, seeking to intercept the earliest buddings of those local attachments which are as injurious to the martial character and the proper pursuits of men whose vocation obliges them to consider themselves eternally under marching orders, as they are propitious to all the best interests of society in connection with the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of Madaura, the orator, philosopher, sorcerer, who was spoken of from one end to the other of Africa. By dint of gazing at this, and listening to the praises of the great local author, did the young scholar become aware of his vocation? Did he have from this time a confused sort of wish to become one day another Apuleius, a Christian Apuleius—to surpass the reputation of this celebrated pagan? These impressions and admirations of youth ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Management, especially to train men to go into the lumber industries with a new vision. (Each big company east of the mountains was to send a representative.) It was also open to seniors in college, and a splendid group it was, almost every one pledged to take up employment management as their vocation on graduation—no fear that they would take it up with a capitalist bias. Then—his friends and I had to laugh, it was so like him—the afternoon of the morning he arrived, he was in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held to tenaciously—the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... broken by such a fall? Their piercing eye has seen—as did Athanase—the brilliant future which awaited them, and from which they fancied that only a thin gauze parted them; but that gauze through which their eyes could see is changed by Society into a wall of iron. Impelled by a vocation, by a sentiment of art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society as incessantly materializes. Alas! the provinces calculate and arrange marriage with the one view of material comfort, and a poor artist or man of science is forbidden to double ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... on a white horse Rode by on his vocation; And the Devil thought of his old friend Death in ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... own experience under the rod of this talker, he suggests the way in which he should exercise himself in his vocation:— ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to finish some particularly interesting chapter. Twelve hundred pages there were in all, note size, in her large, round, almost masculine hand. And this time was all lost! She had mistaken her vocation. The greatest publishing house in the country had ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... we do not see that the grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted by the adoption of Darwins hypothesis. We are not blind to the philosophical difficulties which the thoroughgoing implication of design in Nature has to encounter, nor is it our vocation to obviate them It suffices us to know that they are not new nor peculiar difficulties—that, as Darwin s theory and our reasonings upon it did not raise these perturbing spirits, they are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that the doctrine of design encounters the very same difficulties ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... So! Quickly he fits his habits to his fortunes! He serves my lord with all his will! His heart's In his vocation. So! Is this the letter? 'Tis upside down—and here I'm poring on't! Most fit I let him see me play the fool! Shame! Let me ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... 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 Ararat ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... the Civil Power, it will be considered contrary to professional etiquette for any respectable member of the criminal classes to carry on his unimpeded vocation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... 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
... town in which we lived—how often did I utter loud cries of anguish, and say to the billows that washed the shore with a low, murmuring sound: 'I am a French marquise; there is aristocratic blood in my veins; it is my vocation to shine at the courts of kings, and to see counts and princes at my feet!' Yet none but the waves of the lake believed my words; men treated me never as a Marquise de Barbasson, but only as little Frederica Hahn, daughter of a poor ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... professor of his beautiful native language and literature in New York,—the favorite guest and the cherished friend in her most cultivated homes and among her best citizens,—the Italian patriot, which title he vindicated by consistency, self-respect, and the most genial qualities. The vocation he adopted, because of its availability, only served to make apparent comprehensive endowments and an independent spirit; the lady with whom he read Tasso, beside the chivalrous music of the "Jerusalem Delivered," learned to appreciate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was dissatisfied; a very practical man, he saw in this odd enthusiasm a mere waste of time. Denzil's secession from the Navy had sorely disappointed him; constantly he uttered his wish that the young man should attach himself to some vocation that became a gentleman. Denzil, a little weary for the time of his Sea-Kings, at length consented to go to London and enter himself as a student of law. Perhaps his father was right. "Yes, I need discipline—intellectual and moral. I am beginning to perceive my defects. There's something in me ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... procured me from others, than from any incitement or support which it gave to my intellectual pride. In fact, whatever estimate I might make of those intellectual gifts which I believed or which I knew myself to possess, I was inclined, even in those days, to doubt whether my natural vocation lay towards poetry. Well, indeed, I knew, and I know that, had I chosen to enlist amongst the soi disant poets of the day,—amongst those, I mean, who, by mere force of talent and mimetic skill, contrive to sustain the part of poet in a scenical sense and with a scenical effect,—I also could ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... master! True prophet, bearer of salvation, be not displeased with me that I have troubled thee to come hither. God knows, I have not done it for myself, and not for mine own honor. I am zealous for the name and the honor of God, and I know thy desire is the same as mine, for it is thy vocation to make the glory of God to prevail on earth. I pray thee, therefore, to grant my petition, tell me with what means I can conquer Satan." Elijah at first endeavored to dissuade the Rabbi from his enterprise. He described the great power of Satan, ever growing as it feeds upon the sins ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... become extinct before the Chronicler wrote. The New Jerusalem of Ezra was organized as a municipality and a church, not as a nation. The centre of religious life was no longer the living prophetic word but the ordinances of the Pentateuch and the liturgical service of the sanctuary. The religious vocation of Israel was no longer national but ecclesiastical or municipal, and the historical continuity of the nation was vividly realized only within the walls of Jerusalem and the courts of the Temple, in the solemn assembly and stately ceremonial of a feast day. These influences ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... afterwards, when I joined the Preventive Service, I frequently heard mention of his name as that of a man singularly skilful in defrauding the revenue, as well as in avoiding the penalties which surround that dangerous vocation. One day, he was pointed out to me when standing by the Cross-House near the Ferry, in company with a comparatively youthful desperado, whose real name was John Wyatt, though generally known amongst the smuggling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... was not to be diverted from his purpose. The man who would try to heal every suffering brute was accustomed to see those whom he loved best grieve on his account. Marriage, he would say, ought not to hinder a man in following his soul's vocation; and he was fond of using this high-sounding name to justify himself in his own and his wife's eyes, in doing things to which he was prompted only by restlessness and unsatisfied energy. Without this he would, no doubt, have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flesh gets us into sin even after we have been imbued by the Holy Ghost. Outwardly there is no great difference between a Christian and any honest man. The activities of a Christian are not sensational. He performs his duty according to his vocation. He takes good care of his family, and is kind and helpful to others. Such homely, everyday performances are not much admired. But the setting-up exercises of the monks draw great applause. Holy works, you know. Only the acts ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... troubled lest he should commit a mortal sin by the slightest neglect of the rubrics. At the breakfast that followed, to which Luther's relatives had been invited, father and son met for the first time since Luther entered the monastery. While the young priest waxed eloquent about the happiness of his vocation and about the storm from heaven that helped him to understand himself, his father, who had kept silent throughout the repast, unable to restrain himself any longer interrupted suddenly with the remark that possibly he was deceived, and that what ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... was then I, might be said to be dead too, so little is my past self like my present self in anything but the "increasing purpose" which has kept me one in my love of literature. He was a gentle and kindly man, with a life and a longing, quite apart from his vocation, which were never lived or fulfilled. I did not see him after he ceased to read Dante with me, and in fact I was instructed by the suspicions of my Italian friends to be careful how I consorted with a priest, who might very well be an Austrian spy. I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and the saner part of him was vexed at this compliance; he thought he had a real case against her. She was one of those beautiful women who are not only conscious of their beauty but have accepted it as their vocation. She was ensphered from the world of creative effort in the establishment of her own perfection. She was an end in herself as no human, save some old saint who has made a garden of his soul, had any right ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... rather let thy mighty mind At length its true vocation find In the domestic sphere; The trivial round, the common task Shall furnish all thou needst to ask— There ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and their readiness to talk about them, gave me a good insight into the inner relationship between the landed aristocracy and their retainers. In recalling these circumstances I thankfully acknowledge how my ever-tender loving destiny took pains kindly to prepare me for each vocation next to come. I had never before had the opportunity to see the mode of keeping accounts used on a great estate, to say nothing of keeping them myself, and here I had this very work to do, and that after a plan both ample and clear, in which every particular, down to ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... said Birotteau, "has always seemed to me to miss its vocation when it congratulates itself, as it does in presenting its reports, on never losing more than one or two hundred thousand francs through Parisian commerce: it should be the guardian and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... there. Of all authors whom a modern may still read, and read over again with pleasure, he has perhaps the least to say. His poems seem to bear testimony rather to the fashion of rhyming, which distinguished the age, than to any special vocation in the man himself. Some of them are drawing-room exercises, and the rest seem made by habit. Great writers are struck with something in nature or society, with which they become pregnant and longing; they are possessed with an idea, and cannot be at peace until they have put it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our faith, will become lesse contentious, and be contented with the truthe in relligion alreadie established by authoritie. So they that shall beare the name of Christians shall shewe themselves worthye of their vocation, so shall the mouthe of the adversarie be stopped, so shall contention amongest brethren be avoyded, so shal the gospell amonge ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... from the wealth of his store. He once remarked that he could not understand a man's having to struggle to "find something to write about," and perhaps it is true that one who has to do that has no real vocation ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... jackass," put in the Field-Marshal, whose chief vocation it seemed to be to goad on ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Mr. Gladstone to this beautiful letter, which he has mournfully called 'the epitaph of our friendship,' is certainly a noble and a tender one. The very depth of feeling which he shows at his friend's refusal of what he considers 'the high vocation' before him, is, however, only a proof of that spiritual chasm which Mr. Hope more unflinchingly surveyed. After this date the correspondence soon flags, and at length sustains an interruption of years. It was practically resumed towards the close of Mr. Hope's life, and affords ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... as the great interest of our people. Four-fifths of our active population are employed in the cultivation of the soil, and the rapid expansion of our settlements over new territory is daily adding to the number of those engaged in that vocation. Justice and sound policy, therefore, alike require that the Government should use all the means authorized by the Constitution to promote the interests and welfare of that important class of our fellow-citizens. And ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... knowledge is its own end, and research its own reward. To Milton all knowledge, all life, virtue itself, was already only a means to a further end. He will know only "that which is of use to know," and by useful, he meant that which conduced to form him for his vocation ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison |
