Domestic harmony

“ Worldliness wars upon the sentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great means and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and pretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary. ”

“ Thoroughly domestic in all her tastes, with a love of gardening, and a practical knowledge of all the details of country life, which tend to make the home so comfortable, her unfailing sweet temper, ready wit and espièglerie, her powers of sympathy and strong common sense, caused her to be the life and center of her large household. ”

“ It is that unitive power which arises out of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life. The specific influences of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the home-influence. ”

“ These principles, more than any others made for mankind, become a woman, the genius and conscience of the family, the secret refinement of domestic life, in fact, almost a queen in the bosom of the household. ”

“ Your children shall "not be found begging bread," but shall be like "olive plants around your table,"—the "heritage of the Lord." Yours will be the home of love and harmony; it shall have the charter of family rights and privileges, the ward of family interests, the palladium of family hopes and happiness. Your household piety will be the crowning attribute of your peaceful home,—the "crown of living stars" that shall adorn the night of its tribulation, and the pillar of cloud and of fire in its pilgrimage to a "better country." ”

“ But these social virtues must be nursed in the bosom of domestic life; these social affections must spring from family affections. Home, the abode of stability and morality, also contains the hearth at which all our affections and all our self-devotion are kindled; it is in the circle of the Family that the noblest parts of our nature find satisfactions they would seek for else in vain; it is from that circle that, when circumstances demand, they can go forth to adorn and bless society. ”

“ And so by beautiful traits, which, without art, yet seem the masterpiece of wisdom, provoking the love that watches and educates him, the little pilgrim prosecutes the journey through nature which he has thus gayly begun. He grows up the ornament and joy of the house, which rings to his glee, to rosy boyhood.
The household is the home of the man, as well as of the child. The events that occur therein are more near and affecting to us than those which are sought in senates and academies. Domestic events are certainly our affair. What are called public events may or may not be ours. ”

“ In this respect each family is one string in the great harp of humanity—a string which, touched by the finger of Heaven, contributes a special utterance to that universal harmony which is too fine for mortal ears. ”

“ Before marriage and afterwards, let them learn to centre all their hopes of real and lasting happiness in their own fireside; let them cherish the faith that in home, and all the English virtues which the love of home engenders, lies the only true source of domestic felicity ”

“ Now I admit that home is an Englishman's boast and delight—that the enjoyments to be found in the bosom of your family are to be found nowhere else—excepting in every moral essay. Still—still—must not one confess one should like to pepper and salt domestic felicity with a few strangers now and then? ”

“ The affections and loves of home are graceful things, especially among the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven. These affections and loves constitute the poetry of human life, and so far as our present existence is concerned, with all the domestic relations, are worth more than all other social ties. They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of its love. Homes are not made up of material things. ”

“ These principles, altogether different from those that are taught to men, were suitable for a woman,—the spirit and the conscience of the home, the beautifier of domestic life, the queen of her household. ”

“ Domestic happiness, sincere love and tenderness, these are unknown. This culture of which the wealthy boast forms a deeper and deeper abyss betwen the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor, and who is there to reconcile these opposites? ”

“ Then, the domestic felicity enjoyed in a quiet, cheerful country house, surrounded by one's own family, and every now and then a good neighbour and sincere friend dropping in, has always been to me that sort of exquisite enjoyment which I could never find in any other situation, or in any other occupation. My natural taste is so domestic, that I should not wish, on my own account, ever to mingle in the busy haunts of man. ”

“ The note of the87 English home, except in its most ceremonial moments, is domesticity, not a domesticity of shirtsleeves and happy-go-luckydom, but one in which the domestic affections do not find it necessary to run and hide themselves in the closet when the frontdoor bell rings, and in which an increase in the steam pressure of the domestic machinery is not obviously made for the comfort of added society. ”

“ The domestic life of this couple who set up the standard of absolute equality of husband and wife was an exquisite idyl, fragrant with love and tenderness, a poem whose rhythm was not marred, a divine melody that rose above the discords and dissensions of domestic life upon the lowlands where man is the ruler and woman the subject. ”

“ Are domestic habits, so indispensable to the comfort and happiness of married life, to be formed by acquiring a passion for public spectacles, for company-keeping, and for all the preparatory equipments of costly apparel, and other personal decorations? Can the tranquil pleasures of retirement, the occupations of housekeeping, the necessary management of all the domiciliary concerns of which the mistresses of families must always take cognizance, have any charms for ladies educated in what is called the fashionable style? ”

“ It is therefore the quintessence of domesticity, being domestic with an intensity which no village which is remote from the centers of civilization, which furnishes employment and supplies to its own citizens can hope to approach. ”

“ The home of the American workman to-day is provided with more comforts and conveniences, has in it more of the elements of culture and refinement, is more eloquent of love and the higher life than was the home of the ruler of a few generations ago. And the chief factors in it all, those which bind all together and give meaning, are the honored place given the wife and mother and, springing from that, love, love of parent for child and child for parent. ”

“ More than this, have we not homes where domestic endearments charm us, where domestic duties require our attention, where the relations of wife, of husband, of children have the ties of mutual affection and mutual confidence to attach us to our firesides? ”

“ It appears to us, however, worth while for men, and women too, to look at the circumstances to which we profess only to have referred. Let them weigh the value of domestic peace—let them estimate the worth of home attractions and home pleasures, and let some one sit down and look calmly and philosophically at the influence of family peace, family pleasure, family support, upon the character and condition of a man—of the husband—and then see whether what we have noticed is not worth the notice of others. ”

“ We wish also to suggest the importance of cultivating the virtue of personal and domestic neatness; we believe it contributes essentially to the purity of the heart, and that attention to the neatness of our persons, and the order of our habitations, has a happy influence on the temper and the understanding, as well as the morals. ”

“ For truth and health and honest friendliness, for the bringing out of the best there is in us, for the maintenance of a pure and restful home-life and the development of an inspiring and fruitful social life, we need some other medium of association than domestic entertainments. ”

“ Interest in the outside world usurps domestic attachments, loosens family ties and that interdependence of the members of the hearthstone circle, that once made genuine, old-fashioned home life so potent a factor in developing well-balanced, wholesome character, both individual and national. ”

“ The ideal is the family, all dwelling together in sweetest harmony and content, with a common board, and a common fireside in the twilight of the day, and all the sweet fellowship that these stand for. ”

“ It could never rise till it found a new spirit and a new expression in human life outside the home, until it found a common place of worship, a ceremonial and a morality on a human basis, not a family basis. Science, art, government, education, industry,—the home is the cradle of them all, and their grave, if they stay in it. Only as we live think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized. ”

“ It nursed the virtues of the household. It made woman the companion of the heart and home; it hallowed marriage; it taught the love of Christ and the brethren, contentment, industry, frugality, sacrifice, and charity to the poor. What picture so fair as in the letters of that time of its fresh, healthful life; that “church in the house,” breathing the soul of the early religion? The kingdom came without observation, without noise; and a new home-born, home-bred society grew in the midst of the dying civilization. ”

“ If the home is brightened with the sunshine of love, its radiance is reflected in all around us, and the whole world appears to us only as one family,—full of kind thoughts, tender sympathies, gentle ministrations and noble deeds. ”

“ It destroys the fireside, makes virtue an outcast, takes from human speech its sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. Civilization rests upon the family. The good family is the unit of good government. The virtues grow about the holy hearth of home—they cluster, bloom, and shed their perfume round the fireside where the one man loves the one woman. Lover—husband—wife—mother—father—child—home!—? without these sacred words, the world is but a lair, and men and women merely beasts. ”

“ It is, of course, to the interest of domestic men, the good husbands and fathers who are satisfied with home comforts and home productions, and desire nothing so much as peace at the hearth-stone, to deny this fact, to qualify it as much as possible, and reduce its universality. ”

“ So early does the work, the responsible work of life begin, and so early may its springs of beneficence be opened.
Let any true household illustrate what we mean. What beauty in the filial confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that lighten a father or mother’s care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! ”

“ In every family, however warm may be its attachments, and however strong may be the control of principle in its members, there must be differences of taste and feeling and opinion, and a mutual yielding on these points is absolutely essential to the maintenance of harmony and peace. ”

“ The husband and wife make the Home: the Home is the Gibraltar of organized civilization; and the children are Posterity, in its beginning. Thus marriage, the home, and the children are the conservators of Society. ”

“ There was the pleasure of domestic life, which made it possible to lead a moral life, as he called married life; then, and principally, the family and children would infuse his present aimless life with a purpose. ”

“ It would be difficult to find greater delight than that which centres in those things that concern the home and home life. The love of the old homestead and the goods and chattels it contains is ingrained in the breast of every Britisher; and although families become scattered and some of their members find homes of their own beyond the seas, they find the greatest delight in the objects with which they were familiar in years gone by, and venerate the relics of former generations—the household gods which have been handed on from father to son. ”

“ The love of family comes, in the order of growth, before the love of country; and the love of country precedes the love of all mankind. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear," is the great law of love in the soul as of corn in the soil. ”

“ The ideal which instantly obtrudes itself is this: A beautiful, comfortable house meeting all physical needs; a happy family, profoundly enjoying each other's society; a father, devotedly spending his life in obtaining the wherewithal to maintain this little heaven; a mother, completely wrapped up in her children and devotedly spending her life in their service, working miracles of advantage to them in so doing; children, happy in the home and growing up beautifully under its benign influence—everybody healthy, happy, and satisfied with the whole thing. ”

“ The household, artistically arranged and displayed, represented the divine order of society, where government and liberty, refinement and efficiency, luxury and industry, are reconciled, and man with his fellow man is organized in the harmonies of the creative scheme. And, that the joy may be full to the utmost limits of communion and sympathy, the Fairy of the Oak is seen ascending, to take possession, in behalf of her race, of their recovered heaven—the guerdon of their services to the redeemed family of Adam. ”

“ Clothe yourselves in the garb of natural beauty, and remember that you are born, not to court and please, not to be courted and pleased by, fashionable rowdies, but to become wives and mothers—not to glitter at a ball, nor to promenade Broadway gaily dressed, but to make home a paradise, and a family happy. ”