Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.

This proverb expresses a darkly comic, fatalistic pragmatism: when disaster is unavoidable or already underway (“the house is on fire”), one might as well extract whatever small benefit or comfort remains (“warm ourselves”). It can be read as a critique of opportunism—people profiting from catastrophe—or as a coping strategy, urging stoic acceptance and making the best of a bad situation. In conversation it often functions as irony: a way to acknowledge that circumstances are dire while refusing panic, or to highlight the moral ambiguity of taking advantage of crisis. Its bite comes from the tension between domestic safety (a house) and sudden ruin, turned into a perverse source of warmth.