“If you’re given the tools, you have a responsibility to use them. I’m doing what I’m cut out to do, the best thing I can do, until they throw dirt on me.”
Kris Kristofferson
more infosource: “Kris Kristofferson Is Still Living His Epic Life,” by Turk Pipkin, Esquire, May 12, 2014.
category: calling, creativity, inspiration, music, school of life, work
medium: magazine profile
“From this instance, reader, Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling And distrust not Providence.”
Benjamin Franklin
more infosource: Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 1 (Philadalphia, PA: McCarty & Davis, 1840), 5.
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category: calling, diligence, epitaph, providence, school of life
medium: Epitaph
“Your complete literary man writes all the time. It wakes him in the morning to write, it exercises him to write, it rests him to write. Writing is to him a visit from a friend, a cup of tea, a game of cards, a walk in the country, a warm bath, an after-dinner nap, a hot Scotch before bed, and the sleep that follows it. Your complete literary chap is a writing animal; and when he dies he leaves a cocoon as large as a haystack, in which every breath he has drawn is recorded in writing.”
John Jay Chapman
more infosource: “Greek Genius,” in Greek Genius and Other Essays (New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1915), 280.
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category: calling, creativity, passion, writing
medium: Essay
“I got married and moved to Memphis, got an apartment, started trying to sell appliances at a place called Home Equipment Company. But I couldn’t sell anything and didn’t really want to. All I wanted was the music, and if somebody in the house was playing music when I would come, I would stop and sing with them.”
Johnny Cash
more infosource: “Johnny Cash: A Ghost Rider, Still Stirring Souls,” NPR, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, originally recorded in 1977, rebroadcast on February 26, 2010; full transcript here.
category: calling, music, work
medium: Interview
“I’m married to my calling, but I’m not married to a particular woman. I have no pets. My apartment is full of books and records, the light of Toni Morrison and John Coltrane.”
Cornel West
more infosource: “Called Far and Wide to Touch Minds,” by Cara Buckley, The New York Times, January 22, 2010.
category: calling, home, John Coltrane, light, marriage, routine, Toni Morrison
medium: newspaper interview
“I want my place! my own place! my true place in the world! my proper sphere! my thing to do, which nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime!”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
more infosource: “The Intelligence Office,” in Mosses from an Old Manse Vol 2 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1882), 365.
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category: calling, identity, job, place, purpose, work
medium: fiction
“Work: work doesn’t solve everything but when a person is practicing the work that he loves, you can always tell; there is a rhythm in their absorption which shows in the eyes; their eyes glitter with sights brought back from private places: when the right words come together the world becomes at that moment mathematically perfect: so with each stitch of the cobbler’s machine, the tailor’s needle. They are seeing unity, peace, in some tiny fragment of the world and they know that this fragment is themselves.”
Anaïs Nin
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