Quotes & Sayings About Belonging Somewhere

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

Jeremy Spencer, always religious to an obsessive degree, had disappeared hours before a show while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in the U.S. According to band lore, it had happened right here in Los Angeles in 1971. He walked out of the band's hotel room announcing, "Just going out to a bookstore", and never returned. Somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard he climbed into a van belonging to members of a religious group who called themselves the Children of God. After a long, frantic search involving the police and close friends, Jeremy was finally tracked down to a ramshackle house that was the headquarters of the Children of God. He'd become a full-fledged member of a religious group that some would label a cult. And there he stayed. He refused to come back to either Fleetwood Mac or his wife and children, choosing instead to join a group of religious fanatics and leave all that he had ever known behind. And now he was standing in — Carol Ann Harris

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.

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

There is no one can convince you otherwise when you've finally found where you belong. The whole experience of belonging somewhere also gives a good sense of well being. — Euginia Herlihy

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

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

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

Stop going to church everywhere and start belonging to church somewhere. — Matt Chandler

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

Rest stops have always made him strangely happy. He couldn't say why. Just the idea of everyone on their way somewhere, united by wanderlust, no one belonging more than anyone else. — Jonathan Tropper

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

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

Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here. This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity. This is why your longing is often wiser than your conventional sense of appropriateness, safety and truth ... Your longing desires to take you towards the absolute realization of all the possibilities that sleep in the clay of your heart; it knows your eternal potential, and it will not rest until it is awakened. — John O'Donohue

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

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

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is. — Emil Cioran

I used to cry to the stars in the sky and begged them to have mercy on me cause I longed for the moment when the amount of pain I felt would be unbearable and I would simply go numb. Numb. The very taste of that word was a sweet symphony to me. A relief. An alleviation in my unendurable existence. A cure. I ached because of more reasons than I could contain. My mother's cancer, my unrequited love, my worn body. The absence of my dignity and innocence. The utter feeling of abandonment. My yearning for love and family. My beloved father who left me. My freakiness and lack of belonging somewhere. My bisexuality and faith deprivation. My poverty, being insolvent most of my life, having no money to my name since forever. My shack of a house, cold and loathed from the very first days. My sorrow and grief caused by my weaknesses and deficiencies... — Magdalena Ganowska

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

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

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

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

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

There are faces which charge with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations -- eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes -- perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it. — George Eliot

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. — Claire Hajaj

That, I think, i a truer mark of belonging somewhere - being willing to do anything, everything, that needs to be done, regardless of what I want. — Sara Raasch

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

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

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

You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try — Sarah Dessen

I don't even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere. — Stephen Chbosky

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. — Heather Demetrios

There's something so quietly contained in the moments when one reaches their hand out to support your tragedy.
It's hardly ever spoken about, but the feeling of belonging to somewhere, or someone for a split second, gives you enough power to carry on a few more steps.
When the world is full of compassionate people like this, the world will know Unconditional Love. — Nikki Rowe

Shrinking in a corner,
pressed into the wall;
do they know I'm present,
am I here at all?
Is there a written rule book,
that tells you how to be
all the right things to talk about
that everyone has but me?
Slowly I am withering
a flowered deprived of sun;
longing to belong to
somewhere or someone. — Lang Leav

Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you really want to be, but they don't care one way or the other. Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. I get to be me if I belong. I have to be like you to fit in. — Brene Brown

Off the bike she was like a smoker without cigarettes, never sure what to do with her hands. As soon as she got off the bike, her heart was expected to perform all these baffling secondary functions like loving someone and feeling something and belonging somewhere - when all she'd ever trained it to do was pump blood. — Chris Cleave

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. — Nelson Algren

1 Somewhere, out at the edges, the night Is turning and the waves of darkness Begin to brighten the shore of dawn The heavy dark falls back to earth And the freed air goes wild with light, The heart fills with fresh, bright breath And thoughts stir to give birth to color. 2 I arise today 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. I arise today Blessed by all things, Wings of breath, Delight of eyes, Wonder of whisper, Intimacy of touch, Eternity of soul, Urgency of thought, Miracle of health, Embrace of God. May I live this day Compassionate of heart, Clear in word, Gracious in awareness, Courageous in thought, Generous in love. — John O'Donohue

People usually seek to join a religious system in order to gain the eternal bliss and freedom of the soul. But belonging somewhere; anywhere is not freedom. Free is the wind. You need to become the wind, not wanting to know how and why, but only to experience this quality of freedom that leads to the original "religion". There the soul is finally ONE and aligned with anything. — Grigoris Deoudis

They're just weeds, love, they don't belong anywhere.' Her granddaughter stuck out her bottom lip and furrowed her brow.
'That doesn't seem very nice. Everything belongs somewhere. — Kathryn Hughes

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 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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