charity begins at home

One should take care of oneself and one’s family before worrying about others. This proverb is a version of Paul’s advice to Timothy in the New Testament (Timothy 5:4), which in the King James ver- sion was translated as “But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents.” The four- teenth-century English churchman John Wycliffe wrote, c. 1380, “Charity schuld bigyne at hem-self,” which soon became “at home,” not just in English but in numerous other languages. Later theologians suggested that charity should begin but not end at home, yet even in the twentieth century it con- tinued to be pointed out that it often does (“Charity begins at home and usu- ally stays there,” H. B. Thompson, Body, Boots and Britches, 1940).