Happy at home

“The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness
to those hours, which splendour cannot gild, and
acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals
of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks
to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the
ornaments or disguises, which he feels in privacy
to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect
when they become familiar. To be happy at home
is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to
which every enterprise and labour tends, and of
which every desire prompts the prosecution."
—Samuel Johnson

When Boswell asked Johnson why people bothered
to get together socially, considering that the talk
was so often silly, Johnson replied: “To promote
kindness, Sir, to promote kindness.”