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it takes a heap of living to make a house a home en · X

From the poem A Heap o' Livin' (1916) by Edgar A. Guest.

(US) A house is simply a physical structure and does not count as a home until significant events in the inhabitants' lives have occurred there over a substantial period of time, and they have developed an emotional bond to the house and its immediate environs.
- We often hear the famous lines quoted that it takes a heap of living to make a house a home, but we have to recognize that the family cannot do it without a house in which to start. 1973, Government of Canada, House of Commons Debates, Official Report, Volume 3, p. 2476 (Google search result)
- Just as "it takes a heap of living to make a house a home," and just as it takes character to turn an individual into a reliable person, so it takes sustained moral human interactions to make any institution viable. 1995, Max L. Stackhouse, On Moral Business, →ISBN, page 28:
- It may take a heap of living to make a house a home, as the old cross-stitched samplers used to urge, but a commission-collecting realtor cannot deposit a six percent cut of a seller's hearth sentiments in a bank account. 1989, Carlton T. Mitchell, Values in Teaching and Professional Ethics, →ISBN, page 123:

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