A Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

home

HOME is where the heart is

1870 J. J. MCCLOSKEY in Goldberg & Heffner Davy Crockett & Other Plays

(1940) 79 ‘As I am to become an inmate of your home, give me a sort of a panoramic

view.’ .. ‘Well, home, they say, is where the heart is.’ 1950 H. M. GAY Pacific Spectator

IV. 91 ‘Home is where the heart is,’ she said, ‘if you’ll excuse the bromide [trite

remark].’ 1979 K. BONFIGLIONI After You with Pistol xxi. ‘Where is “home”, please,’ I

asked. .. ‘Home’s where the heart is,’ he said. content and discontent; home

home see also CHARITY begins at home; CURSES, like chickens, come home to roost;
EAST, west, home’s best; an ENGLISHMAN’S house is his castle; GO abroad and you’ll hear
news of home; the LONGEST way round is the shortest way home; there’s no PLACE like
home; a WOMAN’S place is in the home; many go out for WOOL and come home shorn.

HOMER sometimes nods

Nobody, even a poet as great as the Greek epic writer Homer, can be at his best or most
alert all the time. Nods here means ‘becomes drowsy, falls asleep’; hence, ‘errs due to
momentary lack of attention’. The source is HORACE Ars Poetica 359 indignor quandoque
bonus dormitat Homerus, I am indignant when worthy Homer nods.

1387 J. Trevisa tr. Higden’s Polychronicon (1874) V. 57 He may take hede that the

grete Homerus slepeth somtyme, for in a long work it is laweful to slepe som time. 1677

DRYDEN in State of Innocence B1V Horace acknowledges that honest Homer nods

sometimes: he is not equally awake in every line. 1887 T. H. HUXLEY in Nineteenth

Century Feb. 196 Scientific reason, like Homer, sometimes nods. 1979 D. CLARK

Heberden’s Seat vi. ‘We’re half asleep, not to have asked where they are before this.’

‘Homer nods... You can’t ask every question.’ 2002 National Review 6 May 16 Thanks

for the studious illumination. But isn’t it easier to go the even-Homer-nods route on this,

than to question the rule that plural subjects require a plural form of the verb? error

honest see when THIEVES fall out, honest men come by their own.

HONESTY is the best policy

1605 E. SANDYS Europx Speculum K3 This over-politick .. order may reach a note