From the book Soap: making it, enjoying it by Ann Bramson

Homemade soap feels good: soft, rich, enveloping, soothing. The lather is dense and penetrating rather than thin and airy. It leaves an emollient film on your skin that makes it feel soft and sensuous. Homemade soap is comforting in ways which manufactured soap can never be: its look, its weight, its bulk, how it feels in your hands, looks in its dish. There is something ineffable about homemade soap. It's not homogenized, pasteurized, deodorized, sanitized or synthesized - it's one of a kind, every bar different, each unique. It is idiosyncratic in the way of all homemade and handmade things.