Quotes About Belonging

He'd homed in on that flag issue, the flags-and-emblems issue, instinctive and emotional because flags were invented to be instinctive and emotional – often pathologically, narcissistically emotional – and he meant that flag of the country from 'over the water' which was also the same flag of the community from 'over the road'. It was not a flag greatly welcomed in our community. Not a flag at all welcomed in our community

From the first, Giles had enjoyed staying with the Talbots. They welcomed him with a generosity that he'd always known was exceptional. But envy tinged his gratitude. Because however kind this noisy, loving, exuberant clan was, however willingly they included him in their festivities, he remained an outsider. An outsider yearning after the lovely daughter of the house like grim Hades yearned after bright Persephone. Darkness hungering for irresistible light.

Especially if what you can't change on your own got you dumped from one home after another.

Being alone is a choice. It's how we protect ourselves, and it's how we give up when it feels too hard to keep fighting to belong. But

Being alone is a choice. It's how we protect ourselves, and it's how we give up when it feels too hard to keep fighting to belong.

And girls are just mean—a lot meaner than boys. Especially when I'm somewhere new, and everyone knows I don't have any parents and don't belong. Boys will rag on you, but they mostly come around when they see you're cool. But some girls…they just want everyone but them to feel bad.

All day long they hold what look like philosophical discussions, gesticulating slowly with their free hands and clasping tins of beer with the other. They seem to share knowledge of a world where each of them once had a place.

In a society riven into 'us' and 'them', an ambitious young person might well want to be one of the group in the know, one of the unmolested. If there was never going to be an end to your country, and you could never leave, why wouldn't you opt for a peaceful life and a satisfying career?

Vi?ai nekas nepieder?ja. Tikai atmi?as. Tikai draugi.

Un po' di felicità quotidiana, subito, invece di quella terribile, spietata lotta per la felicità assoluta di chissà quale umanità della quale lui forse non avrebbe nemmeno fatto parte.

This is where I come from. And it's where you come from. You'll never get away from that, and don't you forget it.

Everybody is an outsider, if you go deep enough. The trick is reassuring people that you're their kind of outsider.

Arendt's "totalitarian personality," the "completely isolated human being who, without any other social ties to family, friends, comrades, or even mere acquaintances, derives his sense of having a place in the world only from his belonging to a movement, his membership in the party.

A traveler can meet a man born in Poland, brought up in the Soviet Union, who now lives in Belarus – and he has never left his village.

More to the point, the principles of competition, even when they encourage talent and create upward mobility, don't answer deeper questions about national or personal identity. They don't satisfy the desire for unity and harmony. Above all, they do not satisfy the desire of some to belong to a special community, a unique community, a superior community.

No,* he said gently when her words finally stopped, *they don't want you. They don't love you, can't love you. But I do love you. The Priest loves you. The beautiful ones, the gentle ones—they love you. We've waited so long for you to come. We need you with us. We need you to walk among us.*

My name is Hope Wolfsong," she whispered. "I am not cs821. Not anymore. Never again.

We are here. We are different but we stand united to protect our home. We are different but we protect our families, whether they are families by blood or by heart.

I think we've come home.

How sweet to feel its helpless form Depending thus on me alone! And while I hold it safe and warm What bliss to think it is my own! To feel my hand so kindly prest, To know myself beloved at last, To think my heart has found a rest, My life of solitude is past!

Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him Joyfully

I'm a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren't I not at home with the dead nor with the living

You can be lonely even when you are loved by many people, since you are still not anybody's one and only.

Russians are trying to figure out who they are and where they fit into the world.