Quotes About Belonging

cada uno a su casa y Dios a la de todos

Gays feel about popularity the same way teenage girls do. Is it that we really want friends we can count on, or do we just want guys around us whom we can share our curlers with?

I thought I was American, but in those days in Brooklyn, when you were asked what you were, you answered with a nationality other than your own. Since my parents were from Ireland, I was from a group called "Irish.

We were defined by what we did. What we had to do. I think this is why guys like football, and why they join the army, because as long as you are playing the game or following orders you do not have to figure out who you really are.

Is it possible to have some kind of genetic memory of a place where you've never lived, but your ancestors have? Or am I just a sentimental fool, my judgement fuddled by nostalgia, Guinness, and the romance of the diaspora?

Don't cry Don't raise your eye Its only teenage wasteland.

When you're part of a gang, you soon find the parts of you that don't fit. These apparent defects can become assets; they're the things about you that make you interesting & useful.

The worst thing that can happen to a child is to be unwelcomed in his family of origin - to never feel included. Moreover, many survivors have little or no experience of any social arena that feels safe and welcoming.

However, when we thoroughly vent our angry feelings about the past, feelings of forgiveness become more accessible. When we learn how to grieve ourselves out of abandonment flashbacks, we reemerge into a feeling of belonging to and loving the world.

When we become lost in this process, we miss out on our crucial emotional need to experience a sense of belonging. We live in permanent estrangement oscillating between the extremes of too good for others or too unlikeable to be included. This is the excruciating social perfectionism of the Janus-faced critic: others are too flawed to love and we are too defective to be lovable.

You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.

I realized that my time in this place had come to an end; now that my schooldays were over, I no longer belonged here. I had always been a stranger and, if I stayed, I would become a stranger to myself as well.

We are a community of possibilities, not a community of problems. • Community exists for the sake of belonging and takes its identity from the gifts, generosity, and accountability of its citizens. It is not defined by its fears, its isolation, or its penchant for retribution. • We currently have all the capacity, expertise, programs, leaders, regulations, and wealth required to end unnecessary suffering and create an alternative future.

We can create structures of belonging even if we are introverted

I feel Australian. He feels Czechoslovakian. I am completely home here. I give them [Australia] my children, we do good, we work all our lives, we give Australia a lot. Libuse Slehofer

Very much. Very much a melting pot. You don't draw lines anymore. There's no such thing as 'bloody this' or 'bloody that'. There's no such thing anymore. We all Aussies. And the Aussies respect us as Aussies. I am accepted as an Australian and I feel like one too. - Ibolya Cabrero-Kovacs, Hungarian Freedom Fighter

An Italian migrant once told me that … and he said, 'To be a migrant is both a curse and a blessing, because you will always hang between two countries.' This is a very good country, I quite enjoy it, it's fine, but I miss my country [Holland]. But I can't go back anymore my country's not my country anymore. Tinie Nieuwenhoven's, Dutch

They worked hard all their lives, what they basically did was, they built a little Ukraine, a little society for themselves here in Brisbane. They did this in all the cities … not a ghetto, it wasn't inward looking to that extent, but it was inward looking in the sense that it was a place to go—somewhere where you could identify; where you could be understood; go about remembering and preserving your roots. - Walter Sucharsky, 2nd Generation Australian

It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their parts together in pleasant and productive ways, but that some almost indistinguishable difference in my anatomy and psyche set me slightly, yet irrevocably, apart.

Restlessness is the curse of our time. Put down roots, belong.

These two laws in particular were central to Jewish identity in Paul's day. They had become social badges of honor to distinguish Jews from Gentiles, something concrete to hang on to amid the persistent religious chaos introduced by centuries of Greek and Roman ways. That's why I wear my Yankees jersey in Phillies country. I do it, at great risk to myself, to let the world—the world, mind you—know that I am different. I belong to another tribe. I am special.

I love humans, all humans. I often think that perhaps I was born into the wrong species.

A human being cannot survive alone and be entirely human.

Man is a solitary animal condemned to live in herds.