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

There's nothing half so pleasant as coming home again.

There's nothing half so pleasant as coming home again.

A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

No outward doors of a man's house can in general be broken open
to execute any civil process; though read more

No outward doors of a man's house can in general be broken open
to execute any civil process; though in criminal cases the public
safety supersedes the private.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

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.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby read more

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.

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.

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

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