East, west, home’s best

This proverb isn’t especially old. It first appeared in print in a collection of international proverbs by the English writer Walter Keating Kelly, Proverbs of all Nations, 1859. It appears that Kelly introduced it into English as a translation of an earlier German proverb:

‘East and west, at home the best’ (German).…Ost und West, daheim das Best. :

The English preacher Charles Spurgeon used a variant of it in John Ploughman’s Talk, 1869:

East and west, Home is best.