Charity begins at home.

The proverb says that our first duty is to our own family and household; only when they are provided for should generosity look further. It is used in two opposite tones: as sound sense, when someone neglects those near them to help strangers, and as an excuse, by those who never get past the first step.

The word “charity” here keeps its old sense of Christian love, and moralists have argued with it for centuries. Sir Thomas Browne, in Religio Medici (1642), calls it “the voice of the world” and turns it round: since every man is his own greatest enemy, charity might begin with oneself. Dickens gave it a barbed pendant in Martin Chuzzlewit: “Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”

French has “charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même”, Spanish “la caridad bien entendida empieza por uno mismo”, both stressing that this is charity “well ordered” or “well understood”: an order of priorities, not a limit. English has lost that qualifier, which is why it so easily sounds like a refusal.

English proverb