top of page
.png){kind=small}
"Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Vocation quotes
"You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice."
"If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don't suffocate your heart."
"The lawyer has not reached the height of his vocation who does not find therein... scope for a peculiar but genuine artistic function."
"The answer is neither job, nor paycheck; it is authentic, holistic work born from states of awareness and being. Through the coalescence of joy, wonder, enthusiasm, appreciation, experimentation, perpetual curiosity, exploring new avenues, welcoming surprise and wandering, I have begun the next leg of my journey; I have brought the spirit of the traveler home."
"I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything anything I ever did I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion."
"No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception."
"A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person."
"A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Merton
"The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness."
"We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us."
"There is not a flower that opens not a seed that falls into the ground and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world."
"To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair."
"I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me."
"The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them."
"True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy."
"To allow oneself to be carried awayBy a multitude of conflicting concerns,To surrender to too many demands,...To commit oneself to too many projects,To want to help everyone with everythingIs to succumb to violence."
bottom of page