Quotes & Sayings About Belonging

Belonging to the working class is the economy's punishment for those who did what they were told to do in class. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

She didn't belong anywhere and she never really belonged to anyone. And everyone else belonged somewhere and to someone. People thought she was too wonderful. But she only wanted to belong to someone. People always thought she was too wonderful to belong to them or that something too wonderful would hurt too much to lose. And that's why she liked him
because he just thought she was crazy. — C. JoyBell C.

The doors of Hell are never bolted or barred, to those who belong there. — Simon R. Green

Which is the more useful, the scientific world-view, with all its wonderful technical miracles, or the religious world-view, with its sense of purpose and belonging? — Chris Beckett

The memory brought back the timbre of her voice and the tickle of her hair on my chin as I put her to bed that night and the feeling of belonging to someone, mattering to someone, having someone whose first smile in the morning was for you. Someone who slipped their hand into yours when they were scared and trusted you to make them feel better. Someone who knew you, the important things about you, and loved you anyway. — Michele Jaffe

The world seems so meaningless when I am engulfed in the bliss of love and you tracing the evolution of the restless soul of eternal belonging on my face. — Annie Ali

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. — Desmond Tutu

I then greet and cordially thank you all, dear friends belonging to other religious traditions; first of all the Muslims, who worship the one God, living and merciful, and call upon Him in prayer, and all of you. I really appreciate your presence: in it I see a tangible sign of the will to grow in mutual esteem and cooperation for the common good of humanity. — Pope Francis

Some women's arms are places of exile; others are a native land. — Amin Maalouf

Tru, this is your home. You are my blood kin, my second cousin thrice removed. But blood kin's not the most important kin. Do you know what is?" "No, sir." "Love kin. And that comes from the heart. That's why this is your home. — G. Neri

The herd instinct is the new chic! It's like belonging to a club! ... — Eugenia Sheppard

No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings. — Catherynne M Valente

Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me. — Toni Morrison

The object of man's worship, whatever it be, will naturally be his standard of perfection. He clothes it with every attribute, belonging, in his view, to a perfect character; and this character he himself endeavors to attain. — Simon Greenleaf

The inexplicable is its own form of freedom. Belonging is not a form of restriction. We can't name the feeling but we can sing along. — Carrie Brownstein

All the ills of mankind spring from belonging to a race, a nation, a city, a group of some kind. The ideal would be to belong to none, and to care for allbut who is capable of that? — Louis Dudek

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. — Albert Einstein

Elaina owned me completely and it was so good belonging to someone. So fuckin' good. I belonged to her as much as she belonged to me. Even more, really. — Raine Miller

Emma wanted a real man's hands on her body. Big and rough hands belonging to a strong, tough man who would grab her and throw her onto a bed where he'd spread her thighs wide, yank her head back by the hair, and kiss her breathless while loving her until she was senseless. — Cat Johnson

Great leaders, in contrast, are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained. — Simon Sinek

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship. — Sarah Dessen

In Dostoevsky, two thoughts are already two people, for there are no thoughts belonging to no one and every thought represents an entire person. This — Mikhail Bakhtin

She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul. — Leo Tolstoy

And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment. — Plato

To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul. — John O'Donohue

Why not be a communist, she thinks, if it means that kind of belonging? — David Rakoff

The international media concentrates on the famous, the big names. Al Jazeera goes to the margins, investigates stories that are still developing and in the future become very big. Why did the Arabic world love Al Jazeera? Everybody felt he was represented in the newsroom and on the screen. That kind of belonging is ours. — Wadah Khanfar

I am safe with you. I can be myself and make mistakes, and I know you'll forgive me. You've already done so time and again." She walked to him, and when he tried to turn away, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look at her. "I remember when you came to visit me at the church. I was hungry and dirty and didn't even have a roof over my head, but when you were with me the world was perfect. And I was happy. I had a sense of purpose and belonging with you by my side. There isn't anywhere else I'd rather be. — Elizabeth Camden

The river of my village doesn't make you think about anything.
When you're at its bank you're only at its bank. — Alberto Caeiro

If we think of belonging only as membership in a club, organization, or church, we miss the point. Belonging is the risk to move beyond the world we know, to venture out on pilgrimage, to accept exile. And it is the risk of being with companions on that journey, God, a spouse, friends, children, mentors, teachers, people who came from the same place we did, people who came from entirely different places, saints and sinners of all sorts, those known to us and those unknown, our secret longings, questions, and fears. — Diana Butler Bass

I had never had a deep sense of belonging anywhere. I always felt I was an outsider. — Chirlane McCray

You can't build a society purely on interests, you need a sense of belonging — Valery Giscard D'Estaing

Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls. Professionalism has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance. But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience of connection to others and to the word around us. It is this connection that gives us the power to bless the life in others. Without it, the life in them would not respond to us. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Fashion has a political role insofar as following it can give you the impression to belonging to a certain social group or a private club. — Carine Roitfeld

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. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home. — Salman Rushdie

The wistful term "transcendental homelessness" was coined by Georg Lukacs in
1916, in a little book called
The Theory of the Novel
. It refers to the longing of all souls
for the place in which they once belonged, and the "nostalgia ... for utopian perfection, a
nostalgia that feels itself and its desires to be the only true reality" (70). According to
Lukacs, everyone has a sense that he or she once belonged somewhere. However, this
place has been lost, and the purpose of human life is to once again find this place. The
search for this place of belonging, for the "home" that will once more fill life with
meaning, is the fundamental structure of the novel — Anonymous

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. — Pope Leo XIII

In one lifetime it wouldn't be possible to find another woman with whom he can learn to be so free, whom he can please with such abandon and expertise. By some accident of character, it's familiarity that excites him more than sexual novelty. He supects there's something numbed or deficient or timid in himself ( ... ) [M]ight look like virtue or doggedness, but it's neither of these because he exercises no real choice. This is what he has to have: possession, belonging, repetition. — Ian McEwan

Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals. Such feelings touch us deeply and elicit a powerful response. — John P. Kotter

[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) — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Among the gifts of serving others, then, is that we ourselves find our place of belonging. — Reggie McNeal

We all construct worldviews that give us a sense of meaning. Mostly it is about belonging to a group and having a sense of identity and purpose. — Carmen Lawrence

The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independance we must first invite dependance; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he is giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness. — Gordon Neufeld

A group is the manifestation of this need to belong. A group can, however, close in on itself, believing that it is superior to others. But my vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to us, as well as to all of humanity. — Jean Vanier

By refreshing our sense of belonging in the world, we widen the web of relationships that nourishes us and protects us from burnout. — Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

The room was a library. Not a public library, but a private library; that is, a collection of books belonging to Justice Strauss. There were shelves and shelves of them, on every wall from the floor to the ceiling, and separate shelves of them in the middle of the room. The only place were there weren't books was in one corner, where there were some large, comfortable-looking chairs and a wooden table with lamps hanging over them, perfect for reading. Although it was not as big as their parents library, it was cozy, and the Baudelaire children were thrilled. — Lemony Snicket

Intimacy transcends the physical. It is a feeling of closeness that isn't about proximity, but of belonging. It is a beautiful emotional space in which two become one. — Steve Maraboli

It was an old Herrani flag, stitched with the royal crest.
Arin said, "But the royal line is gone."
"They're looking for something to call you, Kestrel said, nudging Javelin forward.
"Not this. It's not right."
"Don't worry. They'll find the right words to describe you."
"And you."
"Oh, that's easy."
"It is?" It seemed impossible to name every thing she was to him.
Kestrel's expression was serious, luminous. He loved to see her like this. "They'll say that I'm yours," she told him, "just as you are mine. — Marie Rutkoski

We can most safely achieve truly universal tolerance when we respect that which is characteristic in the individual and in nations, clinging, though, to the conviction that the truly meritorious is unique by belonging to all of mankind. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

the absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering. It — Brene Brown

And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I've never felt before. A closeness that isn't merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we've only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging. — David Levithan

We are superior to the competition because we hire employees who work in an environment of belonging and purpose. We foster a climate where the employee can deliver what the customer wants. You cannot deliver what the customer wants by controlling the employee. — Horst Schulze

I talk so easily about you belonging to me, but we both ignore the fact I belong to you. You own me. You always have and you always will. That's the very bottom of it, the defining line. — Emma Hart

The hunger to belong is not merely a desire to be attached to something. It is rather sensing that great transformation and discovery become possible when belonging is sheltered and true. — John O'Donohue

There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound; of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth. — Emily Carr

I was very fortunate. I had a great group of friends in my life, and family, and so I felt a sense of safety and belonging that ... as you grow older, you realize that not everybody does feel that. And there's particular certain groups of kids who always feel like outsiders. But I was very fortunate. — Rib Hillis

We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as were meant to be. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache ... The absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering. — Brene Brown

A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong. — Bell Hooks

It's not an accidental entanglement; it's an intentional knot. Love belongs with belonging. — Brene Brown

I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special. — Michael C. Hall

Few things would gratify me as much as a rediscovered respect for things belonging to others. Not abusing the property of others (or that of the community) is one of the ways in which we respect others. It is an essential part of being considerate guests, no matter where we are: in an airplane, in a friend's home, in a movie theater, in a doctor's office, in a public library, or in a public square. — P. M. Forni

I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others ... we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we'll look them in the eye without apology. — Walker Percy

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity. — Immanuel Kant

Our lonely, gray mothers became visitors to a world in which they had no share. — Jens Christian Grondahl

TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background. — David C. Pollock

Proposition VIII. When two Undulations, from different Origins, coincide either perfectly or very nearly in Direction, their joint effect is a Combination of the Motions belonging to each. — Thomas Young

I didn't just see a child in my dreams - I felt it in my heart. — Seth Adam Smith

The body of work I create combines traditional storylines and postmodern narrative strategies to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics and conflict, as well as the push towards - and resistance against - modernization. — Aman Mojadidi

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we're lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find. — Aziz Ansari

We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don't spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options. — Malcolm Gladwell

I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger. — August Wilson

For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness? — Kathleen Moore

Aboriginal Okinawan Karate was traditionally taught in modest home Dojos, in small informal groups (sole purpose of teachings revolved around life preservation), in A closely tied supportive environment; unlike main island modern Japanese version with rivalry and competition, instructed in large groups belonging to even larger organizations with pseudo-militaristic hierarchy — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we're headed in the right direction. — Brene Brown

Close your eyes, Matt, and focus on third eye, the second chakra of your being. Open third eye and you will feel energy of other river as it flows. And energy of Goddess.
He closed his eyes. He could sense the energy of the woman next to him and the power of desire. He felt warmth and a sense of belonging here. But that was all. — Joe Niemczura

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe. — Libba Bray

Cosmopolitanism seeks a _we_ that does not rely on the exclusion of _others_ but, instead, recognizes and confirms each other as part of the planetary _we_. The cosmopolitan _we_ is not grounded in a monolithic sameness but in a constant alterity and _ethical singularity_ of each individual human person regardless of one's national origin and belonging, religious affiliation, gender, race and ethnicity, class ability, or sexuality. — Namsoon Kang

I arise to day ... In the name of Silence / Womb of the Word, / In the name of Stillness / Home of Belonging, / In the name of the Solitude / of the Soul and the Earth — John O'Donohue

The small talk that sprang readily to their lips came to hers only with a tremendous effort. After an opportunity had come and gone, she often scolded herself for not saying this or doing that, for laughing too loud or smiling too little. Whenever she tried to re-create the moment of contact, she was easily rebuffed by the slightest gesture, withdrawing all too quickly if she thought she was in the way. The old stone-and-brick schoolhouse, with its four gabled roofs and round little windows, was the only thing that seemed steadfast to her, while the beings that populated its rooms and thundered down its corridors were unreal and unpredictable. It gripped her like a monstrous truth that she was condemned to lead life without belonging or feeling close to anyone. — Erick Setiawan

It had been a beautiful day for an outdoor ceremony, with the kind of lucid weather she hoped to have at her own funeral. She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this life. For years, acceptance had been her only means of survival. She knew that no matter how miserable or wretched life became, all she could do with her meek piece of time was sustain it. Decades of guilt, lost faith, the betrayal by those few people she'd let herself love - it was worth enduring these things, if only for the gift of a single, exalted moment. And such moments happened, even frequently, in the lives of people wise enough to see them. — Esi Edugyan

Reason and calm judgment, the qualities specially belonging to a leader. — Tacitus

Travel does not exist without home ... If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world. — Josh Gates

At first sight, joy seems to be connected with being different. When you receive a compliment or win an award, you experience the joy of not being the same as others. You are faster, smarter, more beautiful, and it is that difference that brings you joy. But such joy is very temporary. True joy is hidden where we are the same as other people: fragile and mortal. It is the joy of belonging to the human race. It is the joy of being with others as a friend, a companion, a fellow traveler. This is the joy of Jesus, who is Emmanuel: God-with-us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day — Amanda Hodgkinson

I want you to understand something: I am loving father who would do anything for his kids, whether they are mine or belonging to others in my family. — Corey Taylor

It gave me a feeling of temporary acceptance into that elite community, to stroll across the quad at his side. It also gave me my first faint quiver of sexual belonging, the elusive feeling that if I slipped my hand into his as we walked along, a door would fall open somewhere in the long wall of reality as I knew it, never to be closed again. — Elizabeth Kostova

Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. — Bill W.

Destroying the nation state are mainly three things: the global economy, global communication technology and global culture. And this is where we are lost in the process. What could be something that can provide us a transversal political sense of belonging? At the end of the day, without an alternative we end up with populism in the name of very narrow identities. — Tariq Ramadan

Belonging. Togetherness. These words are as complicated and confusing as the word love. It's probably all the same thing. Or it would be if we let it be. — David Levithan

Fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. — Brene Brown

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. — Lyndsay Faye

He wished he could have roots spreading under every inch of his lost soil, his beloved lost home, that he could have been part of something, that he could have been himself, walking down the road not taken, living a life in context and not the migrant's hollow journey that had been his fate — Salman Rushdie

At the exact time that our society embraces shaming, blaming, judgment, and rejection, it also holds acceptance and belonging as immensely important. In other words, it's never been more impossible to 'fit in,' yet 'fitting in' has never been more important and valued — Brene Brown

There is no house like the house of belonging. — David Whyte

Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit. — Joseph Addison

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. — Alison G. Bailey

Estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time. — Elena Ferrante

On the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realized the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. The chalk country-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downloads held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realized that these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness. — Helen Macdonald

I don't carry myself as a black person but as a woman that belongs to everybody. After all, it's the general public that made me - not any one particular group. So I don't think of myself as belonging to any particular group and never have. — Eartha Kitt