Quotes & Sayings About Doing What You Were Born To Do

And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron. — Hesiod

The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

It was incredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood from claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be the Humanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and cruelty and slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buried under the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monsters yet stirred and lived. — Robert Hugh Benson

Like stars across the sky, we were born to shine. — Andrea Bocelli

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to die soon. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. — Robert Mugabe

The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. — Madeleine L'Engle

Usually your kids' positive qualities come less from your making them awesome and more from just not intentionally squashing the random things they're inherently born with that make them awesome. — Jenny Lawson

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that. — Eugene Jarecki

One thing that's really interesting is not only the magnitude of the recent immigration into this country, but also its distribution and its investment in the country. About 9.3 percent of the population is now foreign-born [announced by the Census Bureau at over 10 percent a few days later]. What's really surprising is how well distributed those population groups are. Historically, we see new immigrants primarily on the coast and in a few big cities. I think the data are going to show a much wider distribution of the new population groups than we've experienced historically. — Kenneth Prewitt

Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties. — Gary Locke

I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time. — Alan Alda

Human beings are born to experience pure love, and they never get it. They are searching to experience it from birth until death. — Mata Amritanandamayi

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two paths of which one may choose in the walk of life; one we are born with, and the one we consciously blaze. One is naturally true, while the other is a perceptive illusion. Choose wisely at each fork in the road. — T.F. Hodge

When the soul opens its shell, it liberates the fundamental center that is the spirit. And once born, the spirit spreads its wings and flies with all the freedom of love, going to nestle in the heart where resides true Divine love. Love is God in full flight, and it is found inside our own selves. It is the bird coming back to its nest, the spirit returning to its reality, and the creature to the Creator, all coming together in the domain of the One who is and always was. — Alex Polari De Alverga

You don't have to be apologetic for your God given gift because people feel threaned or throttled by it. Your duty is to keep doing what you were born to do. — Euginia Herlihy

If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that? — Lauren B. Davis

Just tell me one thing. What are you doing not in your country right now? Why did you run off to America, Darling Nonkululeko Nkala, huh? Why did you just leave? If it's your country, you have to love it to live in it and not leave it. You have to fight for it no matter what, to make it right. Tell me, do you abandon your house because it's burning or do you find water to put out the fire? And if you leave it burning, do you expect the flames to turn into water and put themselves out? You left it, Darling, my dear, you left the house burning and you have the guts to tell me in that stupid accent that you were not even born with, that doesn't even suit you, that this is your country? — NoViolet Bulawayo

Doing what you were born to do ... That's the way to be happy. — Agnes Martin

Her lips thinned, but she ignored the bait. "Schedules have been moved up in all departments, you know. Claire received her new reproduction assignment. It didn't include Tony." "Reproduction assignment? You mean, having a baby?" Leo could feel his face flushing. Somewhere within him, a long-controlled steam pressure began to build. "Do you hide what you're really doing from yourselves with those weasel-words, too? And here I thought the propaganda was just for us peons." Yei started to speak, but Leo overrode her, bursting out, "Good God! Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees - M.S., M.D., Ph.D. . . ." Yei — Lois McMaster Bujold

Forget the American dream ... whats your dream? The thing that keeps you up at night ... the thing that makes you happy ... the thing that keeps your spirit going. Do that thing. Don't label it a hobby or what you do in your spare time type of thing ... label that thing you do the thing you love to do. The thing you were born to do. When you stop doing what you love you lose a huge part of yourself. Don't get lost. — Jill Telford

Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. — David Deida

The things at the Village, they will be resolved or they won't. I know you want to hep Amber, and that's gut. But it's not your responsibility how things turn out." The tense bundle of nerves in Hannah's stomach relaxed. Was that what she'd been doing? Claiming responsibility for something she couldn't control? "Gotte will watch out for your freind." "Danke, Jesse. I suppose I was making myself too important, as if Gotte couldn't work things out without my help." "He did all right before we were born. He'll do fine long after we're gone. — Vannetta Chapman

I was born without the flirt gene. It's truly awful for me." That was no exaggeration. " I mean, look at how I screwed up last night with Ty. He was flirting and tossing off sexual innuendos, and I just looked at him and said I would not have anal sex with him."
"You what?" Suzanne shrieked so loud that Imogen saw half a dozen other fitness patrons swivel their heads to look at them. "Did he ask you to? At the party?"
"No, of course not." Which was what made it all the more ridiculous. "We were in the car and he was hinting about positions, what was to come, etc., and I just blurted out that I wasn't doing that with him."
"Girl ... " was Suzanne's though on the matter, her expression one of total horror. "Do not bring up the back door unless he's knocking on it. — Erin McCarthy

Only the people who are born of God can become victors and overcomers in this evil world — Sunday Adelaja

Every creature is born with a potential store of violence. — R.K. Narayan

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call "perfect specimens" of flowers, trees, or butterflies - though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting. — Alan W. Watts

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured
especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised. — E. O. Wilson

Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm. — Madeleine L'Engle

I'm very fond of the concept of choice as the basis for sexual preference. This point of view is unpopular in an era in which every claim for gay rights is bases on pseudoscientific sulking about how we can't help being queer; we're just born that way. Thanks, but I don't want to receive my civil rights as a charity fuck bequeathed on me by my genetic superiors. — Patrick Califia-Rice

I was born in the age of "alas". — Pat Conroy

Saturn takes twenty-nine years to return to the point in the sky where it was at the moment we were born. Until that happens, everything seems possible, our dreams can come true, and any walls hemming us in can still be broken down. When Saturn completes this cycle, it puts an end to any romanticism. Choices become definitive and it's nearly impossible to change direction. — Paulo Coelho

It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. — Roberto Bolano

There are two kinds of beauty; there is a beauty which God gives at birth, and which withers as a flower. And there is a beauty which God grants when by His grace men are born again. That kind of beauty never vanishes but blooms eternally. — Abraham Kuyper

She slapped his shoulder. "You... you go down to breakfast, Gram. I'll be there as soon as I shower and dress."
"Have you been exercising? You sound out of breath."
Creighton buried his face in a pillow, his body shaking with laughter.
Gram knocked on the door. "Do you have a man in there with you?"
"No, Gram..."
He pushed himself off the pillow and sat, his large hands sweeping dark hair away from his face. "Aye, she bloody well does."
Clapping sounded from the other side of the door followed by Gram's bellowing "Born to be Wild. — Vonnie Davis

Lonely? How can you be lonely ? You've got yourself, haven't you? If you ever lose yourself, then you'll really be lonely. In the meantime, stop complaining. You're nearly a man now, and a man has to work. Ever since the world began, men have been doing jobs they didn't like. Why should it be any different for you? You're the seventh son of a seventh son, and this is the job you were born to do. - Mam — Joseph Delaney

I think of my father born in this very small, limited situation and then coming out of that. Many people have this story. — Anne Waldman

All my life I've always been so blue, born to lose, and now I'm losing you. — Ray Charles

That I was born to this circle - I am blessed. That I choose to stand in this circle - I am proud. — Mary Anne Radmacher

None of my 'clients' - not Eichmann, not Stangl, not Mengele, and not even Hitler or Stalin - was born a criminal. Somebody had to teach them to hate: maybe the society, maybe the politics, maybe just a Jewish prostitute. — Simon Wiesenthal

I think that once you're born, the thing you have to do is find out who you are and live that life as well as you can. You can't spend your time wondering how things would have been if you were someone different. — Fuyumi Ono

She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro. — Nella Larsen

I was born out of a Vegas marriage: My parents got married three days after they met. — Elle King

A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American. — John F. Kennedy

In France, they call the beauty of youth 'the evil beauty.' You don't have it because of you but because you're born with it. The other kind of beauty is your own work, and it takes forever. — Monica Bellucci