Best 306 quotes in «belonging quotes» category

It doesn't matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of 'belonging' is always about control and power. I think we have to question the intentions of any group that insists on disdain toward other people as a membership requirement. It may be disguised as belonging, but real belonging doesn't necessitate disdain.

It doesn’t matter where you’re at, when you’re with people you love, you’re where you belong.

[I]t doesn’t matter whom you love or where you move from or to, you always take yourself with you. If you don’t know who you are, or if you’ve forgotten or misplaced her, then you’ll always feel as if you don’t belong. Anywhere. (xiii)

I think what hurts the most is that I just really want to belong. I want to stand inside the circle of other people and be noticed for the right things, but it seems like the wrong things are always bigger. And all the advie I've ever read --smile more, be yourself, dream big, stay positive--seems to have some darker side that's never mentioned.

It is a delicate balance between being present and yet keeping your eyes on the prize. The objective is not to dwell in the future, but to just make sure you visit it with the regularity required to keep you engaged with what you’re doing and where you’re going.

It is possible to adore those newly come into your world, to envision, no matter how late in the day, a happily entwined future with those who have not been part of your past.

It is "the love of Christ" which "constraineth us" "to live not unto ourselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again.

It's hard to put into words what sometimes you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not belonging- the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people and just stay put.

It's never too late to come home," he said, and pulled me gently, insistently toward him."All you have to do...is stop moving away.

It's not how long you live somewhere that makes it home. Home is a feeling here, (she tapped on the chest). That you belong somewhere and somewhere belongs to you. But i will tell you a secret. Some people don't feel they belong anywhere. No matter where they are, they are always unhappy. They go from place to place trying to find peace. And usually they find themselves back where they started.

It's like the song of a family where everything's always all right, it's a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it's a song that'll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that's broken, it fixes.

It’s really pathetic; the way you strive to belong ; to other people , places and perspectives that have nothing to do with who you are

It’s well known that he who returns never left

It sounds as if you are trapped in a cycle of thinking about yourself and how you don't belong in the world.

It was a place you could make into a home if your home hadn’t worked out.

I've been dropped off in a place I do not belong anymore. Certainly not here with Mother and Daddy,...

I used to be a wanderess without roots – discontent and bereft of belonging and then he took me to The Last Best Place where I was touched and warmed through. Never before have I felt the breath-taking spirit of the frontier as distinctly as I do here and never before have I felt so at home where all things magnificent are made more so by inspired calm of earthy humility.

...I've always parented with the belief that love and belonging are the ground zero of wholehearted parenting. If they know they are loved and lovable, if they know how to love, and if they know that no matter what, they belong at home, everything else will work out. However, as they got older and peer groups became more important, it was easier that I imagined to slip back into subtly teaching them how to fit in or do whatever it takes to find a crew... I have to stay constantly mindful to practice what I believe...

I've always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I've worked hard at being the hero of my own life. But every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn't know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No.

I've never been somewhere I belonged, but there are places where I think I could be happy. Like San Francisco. Well, do art museums count? Because I feel like I belong in them.

I went to my dresser, turned the lamp off, and crawled into bed. I was taking a chance but I couldn't help slipping in behind Tweet and draping my arm around her waist. She placed her hand on top of mine and squeezed it slightly. I buried my nose in her dark hair, breathing in the scent of raspberry and vanilla. This was were we belonged.

I want to belong. Belonging makes things okay, and I want to be okay. I just want to be okay.

I was called an 'ethnic traitor' and kicked in the pit of the stomach, then called a 'sellout' and stuck across the face again. I really couldn't understand what the last one meant. I knew the literal meaning of the word, of course, but I just couldn't bring myself to think that I was a sellout. I could sense the incongruity of the label but didn't have words to express it. Then someone who was able to say exactly what I was feeling appeared, like a superhero. A voice rose up from the back of the classroom. "We've never belonged to a country we could sell out

Looking out over the lake, I felt enveloped in the most peaceful, loving utopia.

Love is God of All.

Love is not leaning on each other, adjusting to fit a different size. Love is simply two hands reached out in the darkness, saying; I’ll be your light, if you’ll be mine.

Maybe 'perfect' was just another word for belonging. For feeling like yourself. It didn't mean things weren't hard. It just meant they were right.

Maybe my guard was up all the time and she was reacting to that. But I wish she had seen through it and I wish that once, just once, I had told her how I feel. That I feel safer when she is around. Sometimes I had tested her, wanting so desperately for her to let me down so then I would have an excuse to walk away. But she never did. I wish I could tell her it breaks my heart that I miss her more than I ever missed my mother and that the thing that frightens me the most about next October when I graduate is not that I won't have home, but that I won't have her.

Maybe I live in the gates that lead to outbound international flights. Maybe that is home. And do I feel more comfortable at the departures or at the arrivals?

Meaning springs from belonging.

Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.

Members of your tribe are fellow travelers. The tribe exists to further every member’s journey and well-being. Generosity and compassion are expected. Promiscuity and posing are frowned upon. Selfishness or manipulation lead to ostracism.

Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.

Offering sanctuary is a revolutionary act; it expresses love, when others offer scorn or hate. It recognizes humanity, when others deny and seek to debase it. Sanctuary says 'we' rather than 'I'. It is belonging—the building block of community.

My idea of "goodness" had to do with belonging in a small yet reciprocal way to something huge and beautiful beyond my understanding.

Neither of us fit in, so instead we fit together.

No one really belongs; at least not in this world. If there were a heaven, maybe there, but, even if there were, in it would be the souls who could bear witness to the undeniable cruelty of life, the poverty of the unwanted.

Nothing belongs to itself anymore. These trees are yours because you once looked at them. These streets are yours because you once traversed them. These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you. They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume. You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you. You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair. The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak. Nothing belongs to itself anymore. You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours. He sits with us in darkness now to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.

Omigosh—I'm a squash!

My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since I'd woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that.

...not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am.

Once we are made aware of the universality of our angsts and joys, we become one under the sky of humanity

Our home is a belonging place.

On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life, We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one, And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree." Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end, While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.

Our longing for community and purpose is so powerful that it can drive us to join groups, relationships, or systems of belief that, to our diminished or divided self, give the false impression of belonging. But places of false belonging grant us conditional membership, requiring us to cut parts of ourselves off in order to fit in. While false belonging can be useful and instructive for a time, the soul becomes restless when it reaches a glass ceiling, a restriction that prevents us from advancing. We may shrink back from this limitation for a time, but as we grow into our truth, the invisible boundary closes in on us and our devotion to the groupmind weakens. Your rebellion is a sign of health. It is the way of nature to shatter and reconstitute. Anything or anyone who denies your impulse to grow must either be revolutionised or relinquished.

One of us, thought Gamache. Three short words, but potent. They more than anything had launched a thousand ships, a thousand attacks. One of us. A circle drawn. And closed. A boundary marked. Those inside and those not. Families, clubs, gangs, cities, states, countries. A village. What had Myrna called it? Beyond the pale. But it went beyond simple belonging. The reason 'belonging' was so potent, so attractive, so much a part of the human yearning, was that it also meant safety, and loyalty. If you were 'one of us' you were protected.

Our culture values independence and isolation far too much, it seems to me--we have a hard time making ourselves part of things, of making ourselves responsible to others, and trusting others to be there for us. Sure, there's pain involved if we get hurt, but there's far more pain in isolation. I love community because God gave us other people to live with, not to pull away from, and I learn so much from others that I can't imagine my life without the learning I've gained from getting to know other people.

Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden, sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat practiced movement of flipping my notebook shut one-handed, it was my superintendent wriggling into his suit jacket and covertly checking his shoulders for dandruff, it was the garishly lit office with a stack of marker-labeled case files sagging in the corner and evening rubbing up against the window. It was the realization, all over again, that this was real and it was my life. Maybe Katy Devlin, if she had made it that far, would have felt this way about blisters on her toes, the pungent smell of sweat and floor wax in the dance studios, the early-morning breakfast bells raced down echoing corridors. Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and the inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.

Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.

Over four decades of pastoral ministry—I got started early—you make mistakes. But the mistakes you most regret are the ones that obscure the gospel and hurt the people you love, by saying in effect, "You do not belong," to those for whom Christ died to provide a place of belonging.