Some of the most common, most well-known sayings we share are about the idea of home. Whether it’s The Wizard of Oz’s famous “There’s no place like home” or the classic “home is where the heart is,” home is the subject of so many famous quotes exactly because it is such a difficult concept to pin down.
Home can be a physical place, or even a person, or simply a feeling of familiarity. It can refer to family, to a chosen community, to every place you once lived, or to none of the places you’ve lived. A home is as unique to each individual as their DNA, but what continues to fascinate us is our collective effort to define it nonetheless.
Feeling safe and supported by a home is a critical part of what it means to be human, and a sense of belonging is often central to our identity. Great works of art have been created in homage to homes found or forgotten, and the pursuit of home is something that has driven many great novels and movements.
Whether we’re moving away from a home or trying to reclaim one, missing home or in the midst of creating a new one for ourselves, these 18 quotes are helpful reminders about the importance of its gravitational pull. Because home, for all of its complexities, is where we’re allowed to be our truest selves in the end.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart’s tears can dry at their own pace.
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.
Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.
Good food and a warm kitchen are what make a house a home.
You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.
Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.
If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home.
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
Home is where one starts from.
Whether they are part of home or home is part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer.
I think you travel to search and come back home to find yourself there.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there / They have to take you in.
The accent of one’s birthplace lingers in the mind and in the heart as it does in one’s speech.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
Featured Image Credit: Kym MacKinnon/ Unsplash
Joyce Chen
Joyce Chen is a writer, editor, and community builder based in Seattle, Washington.
