Quotes about housing
page 6

“If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field,… it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Light

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Variant: Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Books, Lying, Reading

“Nudge threw her arms around my neck. 'I love you Max! I love all of us too!'
Yeah, me too,' Said the Gasman. '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 (1947) American author

Love, Home, Box

“Giving to other people makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad…”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Sadness, Smile, Cars

“Bad form, Regin! Wrong car."
Immediately after, the house shook again. "Oh, much better!" Nix assured them. "That was Bowen's!”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

Cars

“She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.”

Raymond Chandler book The Lady in the Lake

Source: The Lady in the Lake (1943), chapter 1
Context: The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.

“A good laugh is sunshine in a house”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Variant: A good laugh is a sunshine in a house.

“I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Source: Love and Death

Summer

“All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“Hey Dad, will you buy me a flame thrower?

Of course not. Don't be silly.

Even if I didn't use it in the house?”

Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbes

Source: Calvin and Hobbes

“I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Beauty

“You are incredibly wise. (Kat)
Only when it comes to other people. It’s easy to see how to fix their lives. It’s much harder to see the cracks in your own house. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

People

“What kind of life can you have in a house without books?”

Sherman Alexie book Flight

Source: Flight

Life, Books

“A beach house isn't just real estate. It's a state of mind.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

“What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Change

“Demonic activity levels? Do they have a device that measures whether the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Simon to Clary, pg. 340
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer things?"
"I though it was keep your friends close so you have someone to drive the car when you sneak over to your enemy's house at night and throw up in his mailbox.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Cars, Night

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”

Sarah Ruhl Eurydice

Source: Eurydice

Love, Beauty

“I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Children, Flowers, Water

“May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Way, Evil, Funny

“It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts…”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Feeling, Thinking

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

Herman Melville book Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs

Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs (1854)

“The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.”

Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat

Source: The Cat in the Hat (1957)

Sun

“You should be home sleeping. What is the use of having a man in the house, if he cannot take care of you for a while?”
“Mmm,” I said. “I give up. What's the use of having a man in the house?”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

Home, Sleep

“Hazel squinted. "How far?"
"Just over the river and through the woods."
Percy raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? To Grandmother's house we go?"
Frank cleared his throat. "Yeah, anyway.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Learning

“Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Past

“As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.”

Leo Tolstoy book What is my faith

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/42064-as-long-as-there-are-slaughter-houses-there-will-always/ What I believe, 1885

“Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Happiness

“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”

Agatha Christie book The Body in the Library

Source: The Body in the Library

Feeling

“I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's
glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin

People

“Now fight me! For today thee House of Hades will be called the saviors of Olympus.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Fight

“To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Peace, Coffee, Drink, Time

“I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“It's a mistake, you know. You have no idea what you'll be exposed to… the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching… and that's just my house. Imagine what it would be like here.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Imagination, Idea

“One pretty woman means fun at the dance. Two pretty women mean trouble in the house. Three pretty women mean run for the hills.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1991)

Women, Dance

“Life's like a penis; When it's soft you can't beat it; When it's hard you get screwed. - The Fat Man, Medical Resident in The House of God”

Samuel Shem book The House of God

Source: The House of God

Life, God

“The woman let out an expansive laugh that resounded through the house like a spray of broken glass.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

People, For Wife

“as a child
i suppose
i was not quite
normal.

my happiest times were
when
i was left alone in
the house on a
saturday.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Time

“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Sea

“A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roark, 'and just as seldom.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Variant: A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Source: The Fountainhead

Personality

“Does it give you déjà voodoo how alike the houses are?"

"That's déjà vu, and I hate you right now”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Hate

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Books, World, Summer, Night

“Whatever, crazy chick who maybe lives here and maybe also breaks into Michael's house when they're all gone. I'm out. Have a nice delusion. -Shayne”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

“One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —
One need not be a House —
The Brain has Corridors — surpassing
Material Place”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

“Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 1
Context: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Silence

“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Robert Frost : The Trial By Existence (1960) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, p. 351, and Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (1981) by William Richard Evans, p. 223
General sources
Context: Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.

“For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love that we call a dog.”

Roger A. Caras (1928–2001) American photographer

Love, Happiness, Dogs, Home

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Problem

“I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“I buried a nickel under the porch when I was 8, she said, but one day my grandma died & they sold the house & I never got to go back for it.
A nickel used to mean something, I said.
She nodded. It still does, she said & then she started to cry.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Grandma, Cry

“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with returning to the house you grew up in every now and again. It's good for the soul.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Soul

“Nico di Angelo has warned them: the House of Hades would stir their worst memories, make them see things and hear things from the past Their ghosts would become restless.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Memory, Past

“And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Death, People, Time

“I dreamed of a green place once,” he whispered. “A manor house and a little girl with red hair, and preparations for a wedding. If there are other worlds, then maybe there is one where I was a good brother and a good son.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

World, Dreams, Girl, Wedding

“Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

“I wouldn't destroy an entire house to destroy one man. But I would destroy a man to destroy a house.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

“I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 36
Context: When I left, Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie-crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty until her mother came into the space with a broad homely smile on her face to watch me drive away.
I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.

Feeling

“When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave room for me.”

August Wilson Fences

Source: Fences