Selected belonging quotes

1. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

2. Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.

3. Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut-a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.

4. Without me there could be no everybody.

5. Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.

6. Home is not where you live but where they understand you.

7. I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.

8. The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.

9. Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.

10. A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.

11. My home is not a place, it is people.

12. One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.

13. Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.

14. People wonder if I'll always be a part of this family and the answer is yes. My family has a lot of good energy going in one direction and because of it, we get a lot of things done. That's why I'll always spend a lot of time at Camp Phoenix.

15. The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans.

16. In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.

17. Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

18. You belong somewhere you feel free.

19. It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

20. Oh won't you stay Stay a while with your own ones Don't ever stray Stray so far from your own ones 'Cause the world is so cold Don't care nothing for your soul That you share with your own ones.

21. Your street, rich street or poor Used to always be sure, on your street There's a place in your heart you know from the start Can't be complete outside of the street Keep moving on through the joy and the pain Sometimes you got to look back To the street again Would you prefer all those castles in Spain? Or the view of your street from your window pane?

22. Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

23. Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

24. My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country? Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there? The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass, the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there? The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking? Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there?

25. Beloved are Israel, for they were called children of the All-present.

26. One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. : I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.

27. I didn't belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier.

28. Once a pumpkin, always a pumpkin.

29. For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive, I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me. I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these badlands.

30. This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome - there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment.

31. The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life.

32. Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

33. Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

34. I knew I belonged to the public and to the world. Not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

35. Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much.

36. I would get songs sung to me, like 'Old Man River', or kids would call me Mississippi and things like that. At the time, I wished I had a name that blended in more with my surroundings. Now, though, I've really learned to love it. From fifteen, I really liked it. It felt appropriate. Before that, I don't think it quite fitted me. I had to grow into it .

37. The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.

38. I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

39. There is a small area of land in Asia Minor that is called Armenia, but it is not so. It is not Armenia. It is a place. There are only Armenians, and they inhabit the earth, not Armenia, since there is no Armenia. There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth.

40. My country or the stars Or my youth, what's farthest?

41. I'm very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me.

42. I know what I am and that is a Rastaman.

43. 'I was Bob's first signing. He changed my life, as he did so many others. He gave us great memories and you can't put a price on that. He made me an adopted scouser.'

44. Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should - not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that 'here' and 'not here' seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.

45. The alembic of English tolerance has operated by now on the newer arrivals as well. Their sons have taken part in English life, contributed to English achievement, striven for England's betterment, shed their blood in England's wars.

46. Are we not men? We are DEVO!

47. Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts held us all together or made us all just one?

48. Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.

49. Ich wei?, wo ich herkomme, also wei? ich auch, wo ich hingehore.

50. My home is my paradise. When I come home at night, I feel an overall peaceful sensation. We will never give this place up.

51. However long we live here, however much I feel at home in Miami, I -- like everyone else -- am an exile, an exile who cannot go home.

52. In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in But are somehow okay. And then some morning There are places that suddenly seem wonderful: Weather and water seem wonderful, And the peaceful night sky that arrives In time to protect us, like a sword Cutting the blue cloak of a prince.

53. My terrible fear of dying No longer plays with me, for now I know that I'm needed For the symphony.

54. Oh! England, my Lionheart! Dropped from my black Spitfire to my funeral barge. Give me one kiss in apple-blossom. Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing In the orchard, my English rose, Or with my shepherd, who'll bring me home.

55. 'This moment in time,' (She said.) It doesn't belong to you,' (She said,) It belongs to me, And your little boy and your little girl, And the one hand clapping: Where on your palm is my little line, When you're written in mine As an old memory?

56. Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

57. How can I give you up? You're the mountains and the lake, the memories--you have them all. When you're with me, I'm at home, wherever I am.

58. She wants what everybody wants - to be loved and cared for, to be part of something beautiful and fine, to have the respect of those she admires.

59. I only exist in this place. I am only human in this place.

60. Please, someday if I'm real good, can't I be a real girl?

61. Don't give up 'cause somewhere there's a place where we belong.

62. Don't give up you know it's never been easy. Don't give up 'cause I believe there's a place, there's a place where we belong.

63. I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. (Note: This seems to Contradict much of what is said by Socrates in Crito.)

64. I can hear her heart beat from a thousand miles And the heavens open everytime she smiles And when I come to her that's where I belong Yet I'm running to her like a river's song.

65. Ou est l'amitie est la patrie.

66. Carmichael was, like many Americans, a divided soul, part nomad and part homebody, who seemed a little bit at home everywhere, but was probably more so someplace else, if he could just find it.

67. Each person belongs to the environment, in his own person, as himself.

68. The streets made me, and the streets stink, but I love them, for I was born in them out of flesh and I was born in them out of spirit.

69. I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people

70. We all belong to this country, what are we going to call ourselves? Recognizing the sensibilities of most indigenous people here about the term 'Fijian', let us find some other name. But let us not leave it unresolved because it is an important symbol of belonging here.

71. We are a nation with no geographic boundaries,

72. The thundering waves are calling me home to you The pounding sea is calling me home to you

73. [He], who was a stranger in every land, belonging nowhere, serving everywhere, until he chose this world as his home, not just because there was a family that needed him, but also because in this place he did not have to be entirely a member of the human race... He could be part of something larger than mere humanity

74. Everything I ever felt myself to be a part of is dead

75. I'm nobody's child You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful

76. [Her] love for the girls was real, and they had always adored this strange creature who had no children to love but them

77. Most people, brought much more than this when they traveled. Perhaps because they were insecure, and needed to surround themselves with familiar things, or to feel that they had many choices to make each day when they dressed, so they didn't have to be so frightened or feel so powerless. Obviously that was not Hunahpuh's problem. He apparently never felt fear at all, or perhaps never regarded himself as a stranger. How remarkable it would be to feel at home in any place. I wish I had that gift

78. I immediately felt so comfortable there. Or if not comfortable, at least willing to bear the discomforts because they fit the awkward places in my heart

79. Which is why she knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on. (Shadow of the Hegemon) Petra

80. more than this so much more than this there is something else there when all that you had has all gone and more than this I stand feeling so connected and I'm all there right next to you

81. 'In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content. As girls, they have trained themselves to faint upon hearing the voice of a 'crooner'. Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized.'

82. Nobody loves me I'm a thug nigga; I only hung out/with the criminals and the drug dealers, I love niggaz

83. Where do niggaz go when we die?/Ain't no heaven for a thug nigga/That's why we go to thug mansion/That's the only place where thugs get in free and you gotta be a G

84. We found a family spot to kick it/Where we can drink liquor and no one bickers over trick shit/A spot where we can smoke in peace, and even though we G's/We still visualize places, that we can roll in peace/And in my mind's eye I see this place, the players go in fast/I got a spot for us all, so we can ball, at thug's mansion

85. And coming new, he'd do tha same thang if he could/Cuz in the hood true homies make you feel good

86. I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

87. Don't feel like home. He's a little out And all this words elope. There's nothing like your poem A scratching voice all alone. There's nothing like your baritone It's nothing as it seems. The little that he needs. It's home The little that he sees is nothing he concedes. It's home

88. So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

89. I've always wanted to go to England; I've always felt a tremendous drawing to England - especially the Elizabethan period. I felt I was familiar with a lot of it - more than what I was familiar with from what I read and studied in school. I went to England. I started driving. I drove to Stonehenge and found that I had been there. It was familiar to me. I went to the tower of London and knew that I had been there. It was more than just feeling vibrations, which a lot of people can do - feel, you know, vibrations of a place that has antiquity screaming through it. It was an irrefutable fact. It was like coming home for me.

90. Everything must belong somewhere. I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.

91. Do you guys consider yourselves to live in the country? [audience reaction]... I heard half 'yes'es and have 'no's, so I guess you're confused.

92. As much as people pretend 'I fit in, I understand, I get the rules,' there are always times spent away from that where you go, 'I thought I knew. It seemed so clear to me, and then...' That sense of loneliness, or the sense of not fitting in or being out of depth, is probably the most common denominator.

93. What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one 'an eye should be,' piercing the very depths of our little souls?

94. In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.

95. The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.

96. I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don't want to : turn my back on a great and noble heritage.

97. My homeland is the portuguese language.

98. You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they're loved and capable of loving.

99. I sent the club a wire stating, 'PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER'.

100. [Variant:] 'Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member'.