Quotes About Belonging

People have all day to talk about what makes them ordinary. It turns out that they want to share what makes them weird.

successful creations grow most predictably when they tap into a small network of people who do not see themselves as mainstream, but rather bound by an idea or commonality that they consider special. People have all day to talk about what makes them ordinary. It turns out that they want to share what makes them weird.

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?I who have cursedThe drunken officer of British rule, how chooseBetween this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

If you do grow up feeling as though you don't quite fit in as a child, it's very easy to decide you're certain not going to fit in as an adult. You hang on to your eccentricities and hate the idea of conforming. It's a common pattern.

This renewed politics of otherness not only allowed entire categories of poor whites to develop a powerful sense of racial belonging, but also allowed entire categories of erstwhile nonwhite immigrants (the Irish are the most prominent example) to become white.

Work and sacrifice, as important as they are, have never been sufficient to gain blacks more than grudging acceptance as individuals. They seldom enjoy the presumption of regularity, the sense that they belong or are competent, which whites may take for granted.

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

we cling to 'me' and 'mine' and are wary of what is 'not mine'. We call this love, but it is in fact attachment as they give us identity and meaning.

Family is the most important thing in the world.

Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service.

Where do you live?' is ultimately a sacred question.

Hospitality is the practice that keeps the church from becoming a club, a members-only society.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that of humanity searching for home.

Fear brings out the basest instincts," writes British political scientist Sue Goss, "and narrows our sense of belonging to self-preservation."16

This is where you come when you are lost, when you feel that you are never going to find the place. You go to the first place, the first country, to her net curtains and her singular food, to her safe and open door. You lie down. You eat. You listen to her. And you know that this house will not fall down. This house is sturdy and is made of bricks, and the wolf will not come and blow it down.

Home was homeless. It could exist anywhere, because its only substance was familiarity.

First, living in community cannot erase buried emotional pain. When people find that after living in community they're still yearning for something valuable and elusive (although they may not know what it is), they tend to feel angry and disappointed.

I have only this cave to call my own.

Because I can tell that I'm different from the others. And they can tell, too. The rest of the taps look at me and ask themselves what I'm doing here. I know they do.

My family were from Jamaica.

sibling who doesn't fit in or follow the paths the rest of us take; who challenges and bewilders, upsets and dazzles us; who scares some of us away; but who still loves us, in his or her way.