Lapham’s Quarterly

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement.

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.

For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

An exile with no home anywhere is a corpse without a grave.

Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.

An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.

Men are merriest when they are from home.

God walks among the pots and pans.

Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.

I quit life as from an inn, not as from a home.

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

Every house: temple, empire, school.

A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.

Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one’s home.

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing’s as eternal as the dishes.

One who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.