Best 306 quotes in «belonging quotes» category

All of one’s life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.

All of us believe you belong here,” I’d said to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson girls as they sat, many of them looking a little awestruck, in the Gothic old-world dining hall at Oxford, surrounded by university professors and students who’d come out for the day to mentor them. I said something similar anytime we had kids visit the White House—teens we invited from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; children from local schools who showed up to work in the garden; high schoolers who came for our career days and workshops in fashion, music, and poetry; even kids I only got to give a quick but emphatic hug to in a rope line. The message was always the same. You belong. You matter. I think highly of you. An economist from a British university would later put out a study that looked at the test performances of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson students, finding that their overall scores jumped significantly after I’d started connecting with them—the equivalent of moving from a C average to an A. Any credit for improvement really belonged to the girls, their teachers, and the daily work they did together, but it also affirmed the idea that kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in. I understood that there was power in showing children my regard.

And as if he had read her thoughts, the old man murmured, 'What a blessing it is to die in your own bed, under your own roof, with your family surrounding you, full of the knowledge that you have lived as thoroughly as you wanted to.

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.

And I decided it really was true after all. You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

And we kissed again. It was a warm, indescribably lovely feeling. But it was more than just physical. It was a dialogue between two young people with high ideals and a Big Plan. It was about belonging, secrets, partnership, commitment.

Andrej thought about it - the notion that the world was riddled with holes where certain people and animals were meant to be, but weren’t.

Belonging is important for our growth to independence; even further, it is important for our growth to inner freedom and maturity. It is only through belonging that we can break out of the shell of individualism and self-centredness that both protects and isolates us.

Art is my cure to all this madness, sadness and loss of belonging in the world & through it I'll walk myself home.

A seat at the table is desired. But I'll scream from the street if I need to.

As individuals and as leaders we need to embrace both emotional and strategic agility. The demands of our lives can create physical burnout and make us feel increasingly isolated and impoverished.

As we apprentice ourselves to the way of nature, we begin to understand that all of life is in a continuous cycle of giving and receiving. It is the honouring of this cycle that makes us feel at home in ourselves and in relation to the rest of nature. In order to experience true belonging, we must not only acknowledge the gifts we are receiving, but also give our beauty away, no matter how it may be received by others.

Beautiful places are not just a joy for the moment, while you’re there. They will become homes for you, spaces of solace and comfort, where you can close your eyes and go to. Nothing you experience will ever go away. It belongs to you now. Just feel. Don’t be afraid to feel.

Because if you don't have someone to run out of town once in a while, how are you going to know you yourself belong there?

Being left out was a kind of freedom...

Being sure-footed is also about paying attention and maintaining the right vision, intention and attitude. You will always benefit from spending time in thought and prayer about where you’re headed and why it matters that you get there.

Belonging has always been tough for me." "I can be your home," he said quietly. "Belong to me.

As far back as I can remember, there has always been a place to which I belonged with a certainty that nothing has been able to take from me. When I say place, that means less a geographical locality and more a group of people with whom I am connected and to whom I belong.

As if I already had some inkling of my own future fate, I was most moved by those of the people here who had no homeland, or even worse, had not just one but two or three, and privately still did not feel sure where they belonged.

As we become more aware of what it takes to move through the journey from where we are to where we are destined to be, the teaching stories that are within my story, our story, is a reminder to use your conscious and creative powers of imagination to choose which road(s) you will take.

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.

Belonging, after all, is a particular kind of relation, one that arises amidst subjective experiences of mutual connection.

Big cities comforted me: the cover, the chaos, the hollow sympathy of the architecture, the Tube lines snaking underground. London could swallow you up, in a good way. There were times when I'd been broken and being subsumed into a city had made me feel part of a whole again.

But I also knew that if he turned away from me at this moment, somehow I would survive that, and I would find a way to flourish like the yard that still bloomed and grew around my family home. I'm Sookie Stackhouse. I belong here.

But in his heart, he wanted to be at Camp Half-Blood. The months he'd spent there with Piper and Leo had felt more satisfying, more right than all his years at Camp Jupiter. Besides, at Camp Half-Blood, there was at least a chance he might meet his father someday. The gods hardly ever stopped by Camp Jupiter to say hello.

But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.

But what is identity really? What is it to ‘belong’ when we cast ourselves in the mold of a social group? I ask this, in spite of my implicit allegiance to one; yet, it is a worthwhile question. I mean, really, what does it even mean to share a commonality of blood or language or religion or heritage or context or economy or trade—and what value does this sharing of common traits, values and experiences truly have when there exists already a larger model of connection and commonality enveloping these disparate identities whole...? Do we pout at our inadequacies in the face of a “something” that is slightly more heterogeneous in its model of belonging? Sometimes, we simply must let go and chalk up all these movements to an inveterate (and arbitrary) sense of pride.

By refreshing our sense of belonging in the world, we widen the web of relationships that nourishes us and protects us from burnout.

Celui qui n'appartient à aucun lieu spécifique ne peut, en réalité, retourner nulle part.

Charles says that he does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as I am his Jane; Sardar says that he does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as I am my own Jane; Sahjara says that she does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as she is my Sahjara. Thus I am daily three Janes, and so the luckiest of all.

But I’ve looked devil in the eye and I saw heaven; I felt safe I felt home And I wonder if he was coward enough to hide beneath his demons Or I was too blind too blind for love that I did sing all my angels to sleep….

By committing to continuous growth, you will achieve not just a good result but also an extraordinary one.

Coming back to Karachi is like stepping into the sea again after months on land. How easily you float, how peaceful is the sense of being borne along, and how familiar the sound of the water lapping against your limbs.

Det var en uppväxt av brist. Inte en materiell sådan, där hade vi så vi klarade oss, utan en identitetsmässig. Vi var inga. Våra föräldrar var inga. Våra förfäder hade betytt noll och intet för den svenska historien. [...] Vi bröt på finska utan att vara finnar, vi bröt på svenska utan att vara svenskar. Vi var ingenting.

Deep down in my heart I know How much it’s hard for me to belong Either to someone Or to somewhere. Because it has always been there in my heart; the desire to make a world of my own out of everyone I meet or everyplace I go. And maybe that’s why it has never worked out for me to belong To any place or to any other person in the whole world But myself …

Don't belong; be.

Don't strive to belong, Parvin. Your effort is much better placed elsewhere.

Don’t ever forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. It provides the fuel that keeps you ­moving forward.

Fear-based images have tremendous influence over us. It’s correct that we can’t serve two masters at the same time. In this case it was fear or courage. At any given moment this choice shapes our lives. Choosing courage, when doom and gloom are all around, takes a very conscious decision to be and act differently.

Especially at a time when one's life was new, roots helped.

Even though an entire journey still stretched out before us, the moment we actually faced that wall was the only moment that mattered. The commitment and effort we needed called for total focus and concentration. We believed in our capacity to take the next step, and then the next step. We trusted our guides, our preparation and, ultimately, ourselves. This fueled our forward momentum and, our ultimate success.

Everyone had a place. Everyone fit. Everyone belonged. Everyone but Anna Mae.

Experiencing a sense of presence and belonging is challenging when we're stressed or distracted. Hygge isn't the complete absence of the usual demands of a fully engaged human life, but it is facilitated by a willingness to put down our problems and abandon our cares for a while.

Feeling rooted in the earth is soothing to the body, and it is our connection to the earth that gives us our most basic sense of belonging, home, resilience, and safety.

Focusing on each and every step you take on any of life’s treks reveals the essence of the work that is yours to do.

Even more essential, however, is the identification of the individuals in the masses with the "führer." The more helpless the "mass-individual" has become, owing to his upbringing, the more pronounced is his identification with the führer, and the more the childish need for protection is disguised in the form of a feeling at one with the führer. This inclination to identify is the psychological basis of national narcissism, i.e., of the self-confidence that individual man derives from the "greatness of the nation." The reactionary lower middle-class man perceives himself in the führer, in the authoritarian state. On the basis of this identification he feels himself to be a defender of the "national heritage," of the "nation," which does not prevent him, likewise on the basis of this identification, from simultaneously despising "the masses" and confronting them as an individual. The wretchedness of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exalting idea of belonging to a master race and having a brilliant führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance. The worker who is conscious of his skills—he, in short, who has rid himself of his submissive structure, who identifies with his work and not with the führer, with the international working masses and not with the national homeland—represents the opposite of this. He feels himself to be a leader, not on the basis of his identification with the führer, but on the basis of his consciousness of performing work that is vitally necessary for society's existence.

Fitting is a luxury rarely given to immigrants, or children of immigrants. We are stuck in emotional purgatory. Home, somehow, is always the last place you left, and never the place you're in.

For me, being inspired and challenged by nature’s adventures is as intriguing as figuring out how to find the depths and heights within. Why? I get to explore who I am at my deepest levels by taking myself into an environment or space that requires more of me. These explorations include both intimate and expansive goals.

From an anthropological perspective, identities are neither fixed nor inherent, but are created and reproduced continuously through social practice and in interaction with others.

He said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there.