Quotes About Belonging

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness

Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

There is the old joke made by the Marx who laughed about not deigning to belong to a club that would accept someone like him as a member, a truth as appropriate in love as it is in club membership.

Our love of home is in turn an acknowledgement of the degree to which our identity is not self.

There is no necessary connection between the concepts of home and of prettiness; what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to.

It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were.

To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to. As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned prom periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were.

Romanticism is a philosophy of intuitive agreement. In real love, there is no need tiresomely to articulate or spell things out. When two people belong together, there is simply - at long last - a wandrous reciprocal feeling that both parties see the world in precisely the same way.

religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.

I'm nothing, I'm everything,' he declared. 'The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?

L'Africain a été le premier homme sur la Terre, les autres races ne sont venues qu'après. Tous les hommes sont donc des immigrés, sauf les Africains qui sont chez eux ici-bas.

It slowly dawned on the volunteers that they were not patients but subjects; separated from their friends and community in Kalaupapa, they felt like outcasts among outcasts.

She learned what 'ohana truly meant, and that she was a part of it. She began to understand that none of this could replace or usurp the family she had always known, but only enriched what she already possessed. With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized: I am more than I was an hour ago.

THE MYTH: Being a misfit is a defect you must correct. THE REALITY: Your nonconformity is your pathway to fulfillment.

If you are a misfit in one place, you will be a great fit in another.

The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.

Each person if he was lucky found the place where he could shine, and the person he could shine on. At Cranley Gardens Johnny had been audience, to Evert, to Ivan, to the whole clever, memoir-swapping gang. But with Pat he was a closely attended performer - he was funny, almost articulate, and rich in things worth saying.

if you're part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn't al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists—it's the Red Tribe." The real outgroup, for us, is the person next door.

the tale of a community that provides security in exchange for thought

No, the Indian mutineers may have surrendered, but I did not. If I work with the British, it is because I no longer feel even Indian. The sea, now, is my only nation.

Mr. Berg, Are you an Afrikaner? - Yes -And are you proud of it? -I am not ashamed of it, but I am not proud of it, for in fact I had nothing to do with it.