60+ Famous Quotes About Home & Returning Home

Updated

There are very few words that inspire such emotion as the word “home.” Here’s a list of quotes about home, and most people agree that it’s a wonderful place to be.

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Whether you’re looking for the perfect quote to place on the cover of a scrapbook or a book full of family stories, here are some quotes to consider. 

Quotes About Being with Family at Home

It’s fantastic to spend quiet nights at home with your family. Here are some quotes about being with your family at home.

1. “Home is where the heart is.” — Proverb

This is one of the most widely-used quotes about home. Countless cross-stitched pillows have expressed this sentiment, not to mention T-shirts and coffee mugs.

2. “Seek home for rest, for home is best.” — Thomas Tusser

Are you recovering from an injury or surgery? More than likely, one of your doctors or nurses told you you’d recover more quickly at home. You might get more rest at home than in a hospital because you are in much more comfortable surroundings.

3. “Home is the nicest word there is.” — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder knew a few things about bouncing around to different homes. She moved many times during her long life before finally making her home in Mansfield, Missouri, where she wrote all the “Little House” books. 

4. “I don’t care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together.” — James Patterson

This heartwarming quote tells it exactly like how it should be.

5. “There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits.” — Robert Southey

We like the idea of home as being a “mystic circle.” Why else would a place feel and smell the same for years at a time?

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Quotes About Returning Home

Why is it that most people don’t appreciate home until they spend time away from it? Here are quotes about the most special place in the world.

6. “Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam. Where the deer and the antelope play. Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word. And the skies are not cloudy all day.” — Brewster Higley

Every Kansan who reads this quote will know where it originated. These are the beginning lyrics to “Home on the Range,” which is the state song for the Sunflower State.

7. “Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home — my only home.” — Charlotte Brontë

The title character of Jane Eyre had an unhappy childhood and didn’t appreciate the idea of home until becoming a governess for Mr. Rochester’s ward. At Thornfield Hall, Jane found love and home. 

8. “Maybe that’s the best part of going away for a vacation — coming home again.” — Madeleine L’Engle

Even though Madeleine L’Engle is given credit for this quote on this list, we know that your mom or dad probably said this every time you returned from a family vacation when you were a kid.

9. “I wish I was homeward bound…” — Paul Simon

Paul Simon wrote these lyrics to the song “Homeward Bound” when traveling in England. 

10. “Home is a shelter from storms — all sorts of storms.” — William J. Bennett

It would be nice if everyone’s home offered shelter from all the negativity in the world. 

Quotes About Leaving Home

Most teenagers spend their last years at home dreaming of packing their bags and stepping out on their own. When those teens turn 30, they wonder why they were in such a hurry to leave. Here are quotes about leaving home and what waits for you when you return.

11. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” — Robert Frost

Some people view home as a “backup plan,” or a place they can return if things become too difficult in the real world. According to Robert Frost, the door remains unlocked for those who wish to return. 

12. “The accent of one’s birthplace lingers in the mind and in the heart as it does in one’s speech.” — Duc de la Rochefoucauld

You can try to recreate yourself after you leave home, but your upbringing is too much a part of you to become a completely different person.

13. “Home is where you can say anything you please because nobody pays any attention to you anyway.” — Joe Moore

Although this quote is meant to be funny, there are probably people who have left home because they feel unheard. 

14. “The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back.” — Wendy Wunder

Many quotes express this same sentiment.

15. “My home is in heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.” — Billy Graham

Billy Graham entered his home in 2018.

Quotes About Missing Home

Many circumstances can make you miss home. Maybe you’ve been gone from home for a month or more than 10 years. No matter how long it’s been, it’s still possible to miss home. Here are some quotes about that magic word — home. 

16. “There’s no place like home.” — L. Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum included these lines in his novel “The Wizard of Oz,” though most people associate those often repeated words with Judy Garland instead of Baum.

17. “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” — John Howard Payne

The lyrics for “Home! Sweet Home!” were written in the 1820s by John Howard Payne. 

18. “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” — George Moore

Consider asking your parents about their best experience while traveling as well as their worst. Learn other ideas on questions to ask your family

19. How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” — William C. Faulkner

Faulkner’s home was in New Albany, Mississippi. 

20. “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but she and her brother moved to Stamps, Arkansas, when Angelou was only three.

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Quotes About Making Memories in a New Home

Are you moving to a new home? Often moves are bittersweet experiences. It may be hard to leave a place where you made so many memories, you are probably excited at the prospect of making new ones in a different house. 

21. “A house is not a home.” — Polly Adler

Sometimes it takes a while for a new house to feel like a home. 

22. “In fact, there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house; it was not a home.” — Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis wrote “Babbitt,” a book about the pressures of conformity in suburban communities. 

23. “Everyone needs a somewhere, a place he can go. There comes a time, you see, inevitably there comes a time you have to have a somewhere you can go!” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perhaps your new home will feel like “somewhere you can go.”

24. “Good food and a warm kitchen are what make a house a home.” — Rachael Ray

Does your new house not feel like home yet? Maybe you need to bake some bread in your new kitchen. 

25. “As corny as it sounds, to me, home is where the heart is… So moving houses is just another way in which I get to experience life.” — Ellen DeGeneres

Luckily for Ellen, she has made enough money to allow her to experience quite a few homes. 

Quotes About Home Sweet Home

What do you think of when you hear the word “home”? Perhaps some of these quotes spring to mind. 

26. “You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch on his throne.” – Cervantes

Maybe this explains why you are so reluctant to go out on the weekends.

27. “Where could one settle more pleasantly than in one’s home? – Cicero

Even ancient Romans enjoyed hanging out at home. 

28. “A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in its permanence, in its capacity for accretion and solidification, in its quality of representing, in all its details, the personalities of the people who live in it.” – H. L. Mencken

In other words, home is where the heart is.

29. “East and West. Home is best.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was known as the “prince of preachers.” He was born in the U.K. in the early 1800s.

30. “Every bird loves its own nest.” – Unknown

What do you love about your nest?

31. “The earth is all the home I have
The heavens my wide roof-tree.” – W. E. Aytoun

W. E. Aytoun is a Scottish lawyer and writer of ballads.

32. “The traveler can get the greatest joy of travel even without going to the mountains, by staying at home and watching and going about the field to watch a sailing cloud, or a dog, or a hedge, or a lonely tree.” – Lin Yutang

Plus, staying at home is a lot cheaper.

Funny Quotes About Home

Housekeeping is a great unifier. It has been a part of every person’s life since the beginning of time. Here are some funny quotes about homeownership and keeping things tidy:

33. “Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.” – George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw is known for the play “Pygmalion”, which was made into the musical “My Fair Lady.”

34. “Everybody’s always talking about people breaking into houses, ma’am; but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.” – Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder’s quote comes from his play “The Matchmaker.”

35. “I’m going to clean this dump as soon as the kids are grown.” – Erma Bombeck

Many parents have had this thought when their children are young.

36. “A clean house is a sign of a misspent life.” – Unknown

This, too, sounds like something that Erma Bombeck would have written in one of her newspaper columns. 

37. “The folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can!” – Jane Austen

What follows this quote is a rant about how boring other people’s company can be. This quote is from the book entitled “Emma”.

38. “Home-made dishes that drive one from home.” – Thomas Hood

While many quotes celebrate home cooking, this one may speak the truth about the perils of a full sink. 

39. “Home is where you come to when you have nothing better to do.” – Margaret Thatcher

Your teenagers probably feel the same way as the Iron Lady.

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Quotes About Building a Home

Everyone looks forward to having their own home or buying their first home. The reality is that homes are a lot of work. Here are some quotes about houses and homes that you might relate to from your own life experiences. 

40. “Better one’s House be too little one day than too big all the Year after.” – Thomas Fuller

Consider this as you choose a floor plan for your new home.

41. “How does it feel to be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?” – Bob Dylan

These lines are from Bob Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone.”

42. “Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.” – Francis Bacon

This is from Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Building.”

43. “They’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.” – Malvina Reynolds

This line is from a song called “Little Boxes,” which described a housing development near San Francisco.

44. “A house is a machine for living in.” – Le Corbusier

The author of this quote, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, otherwise known as “Le Corbusier”, was a French-born architect, designer, urban planner, and writer.

45. “He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, 
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

This is the end of the old nursery rhyme entitled “There Was a Crooked Man”. 

46. “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” – II Corinthians 5:1

There’s a difference between an earthly home and a heavenly home. 

Quotes About Home Ownership

There are many quotes about the warm feelings people often associate with home, and there are some that encompass the not-so-warm feelings. Here are some blunt statements about homeownership.

47. “The fellow that owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store.” Kin Hubbard

What’s on your to-do list this weekend?

48. “All work and no pay makes a housewife.” – Evan Esar

Evan Esar was a comic writer who was most prevalent in the 1940s.

49. “I personally am inclined to approach housework the way governments treat dissent; ignore it until it revolts.”– Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is a prolific and celebrated writer.

50. “Housekeeping ain’t no joke.” – Louisa May Alcott

This line is from Alcott’s most celebrated novel, Little Women.

51. “There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.” – Quentin Crisp

How many years do you have to go until you can quit worrying about the dirt in your house?

52. “It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of one’s home.” Charles Dickens

There are many reasons one might feel ashamed of home. It might be the building, the contents, or its occupants. This quote is from Great Expectations. 

53. “To market, to market, 
To buy a plum bun;
Home again, home again, 
Market is done.” 

Who knew that this old nursery rhyme would tell the story of many of our lives?

54. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf

There’s more to homeownership than housework. It may be the place you write your literary masterpiece.

Quotes About Home, Love, and Family

Does the word “home” make you think of family and love? Here are some quotes that give both positive and negative views of the home. 

55. “The most important thing a man can know is that, as he approaches his own door, someone on the other side is listening for the sound of his footsteps.” – Clark Gable

Clark Gable was best known for playing Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.

56. “The difference between a house and a home is this: a house may fall down, but a home is broken up.” – Elbert Hubbard

These distinctions make English difficult to learn.

57. “She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years... Something inside that was always denied for so many years.” – John Lennon and Paul McCartney

These lyrics are from the song “She’s Leaving Home,” which was from the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

58. “Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” Phyllis Diller

Every parent needs to be reminded of this truthful statement. 

59. “You can’t go home again.” – Thomas Wolfe

Do you feel as if this is true? Thomas Wolfe must have thought so because he used this phrase as the title of his book.

60. “E.T. Phone home.” – Melissa Mathison

You might not have heard of Melissa Mathison, but you can indeed quote this famous line.

61. “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses.” – Fred Hillebrand

This line is the title for a rather strange song recorded in the early part of the last century. Regardless of the quirky lyrics, it speaks about being eager to get home after a disappointing evening. 

What Makes You Think of Home?

Does the smell of coffee or garlic remind you of home? What about specific songs about memories, such as “Take Me Home?” Perhaps you feel at home when you eat bierocks or spanakopita.

Are you feeling nostalgic yet? We hope these quotes reminded you of pleasant memories of that particular place you think of as home.

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