“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist
Reply to questionnaire, "The Cost of Letters" in Horizon (September 1946).
General sources
“I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion — indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.”
On being a lawyer, as quoted by Claire Birge in The Stevensons : A Biography of an American Family (1997) by Jean H. Baker, p. 262
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Adlai Stevenson131
mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the… 1900–1965Related quotes
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist
Source: On Death and Dying (1969), Ch. 2
George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin
J'ai un but, une tâche, disons le mot, une passion. Le métier d'écrire en est une violente et presque indestructible.
Letter to Jules Boucoiran, (4 March 1831), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 1, pp. 817-18; Frederick Niecks Frederick Chopin: As a Man and Musician (London: Novello, 1890) vol. 1, p. 334
“I feel I can't go on with this bloody business: I would rather resign.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Quoted by C. P. Scott in his diary (28 December 1917), in Trevor Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911-1928 (London: Collins, 1970), p. 324
Prime Minister
Context: "I warn you", said Lloyd George, "that I am in a very pacifist temper". I listened last night, at a dinner given to Philip Gibbs on his return from the front, to the most impressive and moving description from him of what the war really means that I have heard. Even an audience of hardened politicians and journalists was strongly affected. The thing is horrible and beyond human nature to bear and "I feel I can't go on with this bloody business: I would rather resign."
Marjo-Riikka Makela (1977) Finnish actress
2009 speech at the opening ceremony for Chekhov Studio International Los Angeles ( online http://chekhovstudio.com/2013/07/inspiring-quotes/ and books.google.com http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Spirit_of_Creation_Discipline_and_At.html?id=jqMInoDQoxMC)
George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.53-4
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist
Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38
Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: My life is pretty well at peace, and the profession is more of an avocation. It's a calling, if you like, rather than a job. I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature.
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice
"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
"Professions for Women"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)