Outcast (person)

An outcast is someone who is rejected or 'cast out', as from home or society.

Quotes

• The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
  • Joseph Conrad in Under Western Eyes (1911)

• Smash is the way you feel all alone, Like an outcast you're out on your own.
  Smash is the way you deal with your life, Like an outcast you're smashing your strife
  • Dexter Holland, Smash, from the album Smash (1994).

• On the edge of the world, and a curs'd outcast.
  • Joaquin Miller, Pace Implora.

• The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice. Why did Jesus do this? What would make a middle-class man talk to beggars and mix socially with the poor? What would make a prophet associate with the rabble who know nothing of the law? The answer comes across very clearly in the gospels: compassion.
  • Albert Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 27.

• My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
  • Daniel O'Connell, July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)

• When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
  I all alone beweep my outcast state,
  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
  And look upon myself, and curse my fate
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 (1598)

• I will feed you even though you are an outcast. I will give you drink even though you are an outcast. You are still my son, even if your god has turned against you.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection III at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BC.

• After becoming a thief, one becomes an outcast.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection XVI at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BC.

• A prison wall was round us both,
  Two outcast men we were:
  The world had thrust us from its heart,
  And God from out His care:
  And the iron gin that waits for Sin
  Had caught us in its snare.
  • Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

See also

• Class conflict
• Class stratification
• Crime
• Discrimination
• Oppression
• Poverty
• Rank
• Social class
• Social stigma