#belonging

Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#belonging #between #category #common #creates

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. ↗

— Jane Devin

#belonging #hurt #pain #attitude

As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you’re a kid again, poking around in your parents’ closet, only this time there’s no chance of getting in trouble, so you don’t have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew. ↗

— Roz Chast

#cleaning #death #mourning #parents #perception

The voice so filled with nostalgia that you could almost see the memories floating through the blue smoke, memories not only of music and joy and youth, but perhaps, of dreams. They listened to the music, each hearing it in his own way, feeling relaxed and a part of the music, a part of each other, and almost a part of the world. ↗

— Hubert Selby Jr.

#comfort #joy #music #youth #dreams

You are my home; it is in your loving gaze that I find the comfort, acceptance, and the sense of belonging. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#life #love #loving #relationships #experience

How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else? ↗

— Madeline Claire Franklin

#family #introspection #life #self-awareness #the-poppet-and-the-lune

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. ↗

— Anita Rau Badami

#dying #family

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

#attribute #belonging #character #clothes #endeavors

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. ↗

— Sandra Neil Wallace

#author-sandra-neil-wallace #belonging #family #little-joe #nature

By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier. ↗

— Susan Lieberman

#building #chaotic #create #easier #living