when we have learned to live, life's purpose is answered, and we die!
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). copy citation

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Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
Source Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands
Topic learning life
Date 1854
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13945/13945-h/13945-h.htm

Context

“Could Scott have been given back to the world again after the heavy discipline of life had passed over him, he would have spoken otherwise of many things. What he vainly struggled to say to Lockhart on his death bed would have been a new revelation, of his soul to the world, could he have lived to unfold it in literature. But so it is: when we have learned to live, life's purpose is answered, and we die! This is the sum and substance of some conversations held while rambling among these scenes, going in and out of arches, climbing into nooks and through loopholes, picking moss and ivy, and occasionally retreating under the shadow of some arch, while the skies were indulging in a sudden burst of emotion.” source