Tavis Smiley Quotes

For years and years I have done the work I was born for.

You remember our talk about purpose and meaning?" he asked me, the smile disappearing. "Well, I think this might be mine. I think this is what I was meant to do, Georgina.

There are lots of things we're able to do, but I'd like to land on the one thing I was MADE to do.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

What is my calling? What am I supposed to do? I think running for office, public office, can be a divine calling. I mean, I've wrestled with that very question myself.

I never struggled with trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do or what made the sparks go for me.

There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love.

Sometimes you just know what you're placed on this earth to do.

I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don't believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be.

I've always considered myself lucky that I do not have many passions. There's only one pursuit that I have ever truly loved, and that pursuit is writing. This means, conveniently enough, that I never had to search for my destiny; I only had to obey it.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

After a few years, I understood that this is what I was meant to do.

When you find something that you really love to do, you kind of just know instantly that, OK yeah, I want to do this for the rest of my life.

When I started making music, I was like, 'This is something I can believe I was meant to do.'

One of the things my dad told me when I was growing up was, 'Find your calling. Find what you're meant to do.' When I found animation, I knew this was it.

Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play.

Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.

Love the calling you have, not the one you wish you had.

When you are bigger than your purpose you have a career. When your purpose is bigger than you, you have a calling.

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses.

The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world's great needs.

It's a miracle when we finally discover whom we're best equipped to serve.

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…..Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.