The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it -- can't help trying to interest her nearest read more

The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it -- can't help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by read more

At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his lov'd partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board.

Where thou art, that is home.

Where thou art, that is home.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my read more

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

The worst thing about work in the house or home is that whatever you do is destroyed, laid waste or read more

The worst thing about work in the house or home is that whatever you do is destroyed, laid waste or eaten within twenty four hours.

Home is home, though it be never so homely.

Home is home, though it be never so homely.

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes read more

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.