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.

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
read more

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

My whinstone house my castle is,
I have my own four walls.

My whinstone house my castle is,
I have my own four walls.

For a man's house is his castle.

For a man's house is his castle.

For the whole world, without a native home,
Is nothing but a prison of larger room.

For the whole world, without a native home,
Is nothing but a prison of larger room.

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.

I've read in many a novel, that unless they've souls that
grovel--
Folks prefer in fact a hovel read more

I've read in many a novel, that unless they've souls that
grovel--
Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls.

What's the good of a home if you are never in it?

What's the good of a home if you are never in it?