charity begins at home

Idioms  

1. Be generous to your family before helping others. For example, She spends hours and hours on volunteer work and neglects the children, forgetting that charity begins at home. This proverb was first recorded in English, in slightly different form, in John Wycliffe's Of Prelates (c. 1380); “Charity should begin at himself.”

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Example Sentences

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charity begins at home

It’s an old saying, but charity begins at home, meaning that children learn the values of decency — do unto others — from their parent-leaders within the family’s miniature social system.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 24, 2018

Since charity begins at home, he can almost always point to the many benefits seniority has brought his own district.

From Time Magazine Archive

The difficulty here is out of all proportion with the injustice committed for, after all, one must live, and charity begins at home, our first duty is toward ourselves.

From Explanation of Catholic Morals A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals by John H. (John Henry) Stapleton

That charity begins at home is true, Yet this is rightly understood by few.

From Life and Literature Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, and classified in alphabetical order by John Purver Richardson

Art begins, as charity begins, at home; and where the home of the individual is absolutely artistic, it cannot fail that the whole nation should be a nation of artists.

From Japan A Record in Colour by Dorothy Menpes

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