Quotes About Belonging

I didn't think of myself as American or German, but as a little of both. I didn't speak only German or only English, but used whatever words worked best for the situation.

I am nowhere. I am home.

During a long heart-to-heart talk, as they ramble through the country lanes near Bredon Hill, his father muses upon the old meaning of 'pagan' – 'belonging to the village'. 'The village is sneered at as something petty. Petty it can be. Yet it works – the scale is human. People can relate there. Man may yet, in the nick of time, revolt, and save himself. Revolt from the monolith; come back to the village.' He

We of the South

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.

I wish we had somebody here who never would be missed. Regrettably we are all friends.

He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment.

The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend—and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn't learn for years yet, and approved of them all.

property' is not the natural and obvious concept that most people think it is.

I had come to realize that they either didn't care or wouldn't care. All that mattered to them was whether or not you were part of Boss's outfit.

and when you're home, what's wrong with skin? Or as near as local custom permits.

Thorby had two choices. Be adopted quietly or make a fuss and be adopted anyhow

Forgive me. It's true. I wander. I wander in my heart and my thoughts. Such is the curse of any emigrant, to abandon one's home and never find another, to always flounder in a sea of remorse.

It's as natural as anyone else.

My name is Hugo. No, just Hugo. That's all they ever called me at the Home. I lived at the Home ever since I can remember, and the Sisters were very kind to me. The other children, they would not play with me because of my back and my squint but the Sister's were kind. They didn't call me "Crazy Hugo'' and make fun of me because I couldn't recite. They didn't get me in the corner and hit me and make me cry.

Thanks, Lyle. It's good to be here." Mr. Sincerity.

People need to discover their ethnic roots as an anchor in the face of a more cosmopolitan world.

Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.

Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.' 'I should have called it Something you somehow haven't to deserve.

It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.

He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place, which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.