Welcoming Quotes

“It is good people who make good places.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

“At times, silence can be a welcoming and hospitable partner when we can let loose, and the flow of time is sending a comforting wave of sound vibrations gently opening the skyline. ("A gap of silence")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.”
― Piero Gheddo

“The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life.”
― Tony Hawks, Round Ireland with a Fridge

“His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.
To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“Hospitality is a prized virtue of monastic communities. Benedict's rule says: 'All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."' Brother Alphonsus served as a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit college in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked at the door he would reply, 'I am coming, Lord!' This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door.”
― Ken Shigematsu, God in My Everything: How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God

“Maybe it was this place, this strange, ramshackle, warm-hearted place, that had given his wife that air of laughing, welcoming life. Because here she bloomed. With him she had faded and he had faded with her. Yet here she was, his Jane again.
His hope. And he had never, ever wanted to hope again.”
― Amanda McCabe, The Runaway Countess

“You have the freedom and the ability to decide what to do with your life, and that includes learning how to welcome happiness again. It's a conscious choice we each have to make, to emerge from the embers of profound loss and hopelessness, to become the fire that warms us, lights our path, all of it. We can embody that warmth and light.”
― Becca Vry, Musings: An Argyle Empire Anthology

“As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in - which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here.”
― Ilhan Omar, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman

“How special it was, that first sip, and each sip that came after.
How it had settled and warmed her, made her feel that she was welcome.
That's what Sara did.”
― Nina LaCour, Yerba Buena

“Seeing them today… was this still that renowned Qing Jing Peak which produced countless youths full of pretentious literary airs?

This whole place was a trusteeship for ADHD children.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù, 人渣反派自救系統 下

“See the openness of the ocean. Now feel that your mind is more open and welcoming than that.”
― Debasish Mridha

“What did the mat say to the door? You must be really aDOORable to open up to everyone who knock at you. And I welcome everyone and what do I get? People stepping all over me”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count

“Going to the extreme of inviting and welcoming people into your church in order to hear you condemn them or to know from your policy that you condemn them is not much better than bullying.”
― Christina Engela

“Perhaps our synagogues, our temples, and our churches," Archbishop Tutu added, "are not as welcoming as they should be. I really think that we do need for these fellowships to do a great deal more to have those who are lonely come and share. Not in an aggressive way, or in order, as it were, to increase their records or their ranks, but really just keenly interested in one person who comes and gets what they did not have before--warmth and fellowship. ...”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Welcome to the place on the other side of midnight.”
― Mladen Đorđević, Svetioničar - Pritajeno zlo

“I found my voice within the Pagan community.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, The Magic of Nature: Meditations & Spells to Find Your Inner Voice

“I wonder how deeply our world would be soothed if, after sharing Communion each week, Christians still pooled their resources to ensure that no one in the community lacked food, shelter, or education; that visitors moving into town were welcomed and provided for-even if it meant we made room in our own houses or sold property to make it so. If, instead of fearing the habits, beliefs, and diseases of our neighbors, our active, agapë love left no oxygen for fear. If we cared about the literal meaning of verses like these.”
― Catherine McNiel, Fearing Bravely: Risking Love for Our Neighbors, Strangers, and Enemies

“Sometimes the pain is a startling breach that hobbles your entire soul; dreadful losses that rupture your perceived reality. Pain so visceral and unrelenting that even death itself can begin to look like a welcomed and kind benefactor.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Ahhh, my winter cozy woosah place to re-craft brain-cell recharge, and recreate; for the author & reader community...that place is a bookstore, and its cafe becomes a welcoming hangout, almost any day.”
― Tracey Bond

“We are still waiting for our welcoming ceremonies.”
― Colleen Cardinal, Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else): A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home

“Renzo from Roddino leaves us on the doorstep of Osteria da Gemma, a Langhe culinary landmark in a village scarcely large enough to fill the restaurant. Before we can shake off the wet and the cold, before we can see a menu or catch our breath, the waiter comes by and drops a cutting board full of salumi between us. Prego. Then another plate comes out- carne cruda, a soft mound of hand-chopped veal dressed with nothing but olive oil and a bit of lemon, a classic warm-up to a Piedmont meal.
The plates continue, and it soon becomes very clear that we have no say in the matter. Insalata russa, a tricolore of toothsome green peas, orange carrots, and ivory potatoes, bound in a cloak of mayonnaise and crumbled egg yolk. Vitello tonnato, Piedmont's famous take on surf and turf: thin slices of roast beef with a thick emulsion of mayo and tuna. Each bite brings us slowly out of the mist of emotion and into the din of the dining room.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“I think it's important to note that that takes work: family doesn't just happen; welcome isn't a neutral state. We have to tend to these things.”
― R. Eric Thomas, Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays

“Tobin James Mueller: 'No one is turned away, my one rule. I never say no. That's one of the reasons it became a utopia.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster