A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.
Interpretation
A home is defined by the people who inhabit it rather than just its physical structure.
This quote emphasizes that the true nature of a home goes beyond its physical attributes, such as walls and roofs; it is fundamentally shaped by the individuals who live there. The personalities, relationships, and interactions among the inhabitants create the emotional and spiritual essence of a home.
In practice
In a speech about family values, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of connections at home.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into child mode; there's no down time.
When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.
For in those tacit understandings which maintain the bond of family union, the mother is really the mistress of her daughter only upon the condition of continually presenting herself to her as a model of wisdom and type of perfection.
It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.
There is a mighty power in a mother's hand. There's more power in a woman's hand than there is in a king's scepter. And there is a mighty power in a mother's kiss β inspiration, courage, hope, ambition, in a mother's kiss.
My daughter was asked by a little old lady in a London hotel restaurant what her daddy did. She answered, βHeβs a pirateβ - I was very proud of that answer.
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