Quotes About Belonging

A man's first bond is that which ties him into the national community.

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.

I am a man who belongs to no-one and who belongs to everyone.

We must re-grasp the idea of church membership as being the membership of the body of Christ and as the biggest honour which can come man's way in this world.

If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere.

His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant, talented or lucky. He didn't even have a part of the country to call home until he moved to California, which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, it was probably his general disorientation that did them in.

For like a lot of young Moirans, Kath Two didn't even try to establish a fixed home. With a home came a social circle, and perhaps a family.

Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military.

class is more than income—it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships.

It's not about energy and skill," Rufus said. "It's about finding a fit. Where does ol' Rufus fit? Not many places.

Why any one place should forever hold enchantment for the reason you are born there is a mystery. But like cats and birds we are pussy-footed and pigeon-toed and our footsteps lead toward home.… The Eskimo longs for his northern bleakness and his ice hut, the cowboy dreams of the wide open towns and prairies of the west, the old salt is looking out to sea Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and down in the hold of many ships are dead Chinamen's bones going home to China.

Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it, and now I'm stuck observing these machinations or sex and status and dancing and parties and people sucking at each other under the bleacher seating like some kind of freak, when I'm not the freak; Rich is the freak. Clearly. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated, or I'm going to shoot myself in the head.

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

But really we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.

This was why only the uptight, small-minded kids in school got involved in politics, I thought. It's not about changing the world. It's still about what lunch table you sit at.

She wasn't any more familiar with boutique shopping in Bombay or the challenges of dating someone in the movie industry, but she knew what it was to feel that you would never become fully adult in the country where you lived, would never understand the jokes or master the graces that came so naturally to everyone around you.

As if aware of her desire and her hesitation, Clare remarked thoughtfully: "You know, 'Rene, I've often wondered why more colored girls, girls like you and Margaret Hammer and Esther Dawson and—oh, lots of others—never 'passed' over.

Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.

And mingled with her disbelief and resentment was another feeling, a question. Why hadn't she spoken that day? Why, in the face of Bellew's ignorant hate and aversion, had she concealed her own origin? Why had she allowed him to make his assertions and express his misconceptions undisputed? Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defense of the race to which she belonged?

Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged

If you feel you belong to things as they are, you won't hold up anyone in the alley no matter how hungry you may get. And you won't write anything that anyone will read a second time either.

Belonging nowhere, no one can tell who he really is. Who one really is depends on what world he belongs to. The secret multitudes who belong to no world, no way of life, no particular time and place, are the truly displaced persons: displaced from their true selves. They are not the disinherited: they are those who have disinherited their own selves.

She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. Her idea of home had been any side-alley entrance and a pint of tinted gin. All she had ever striven for was small change left lying by strangers on North Clark Street bars; and any man's bottle at all.

An Englishman once said that he found it easier to be a member of a club than of the human race because the bylaws were shorter, and he knew all the members personally. That sounds about right.