“Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now.”

— Lucy Larcom

Journal entry (20 February 1893), Ch. 12 : Last Years.
Lucy Larcom : Life, Letters, and Diary (1895)
Context: The noblest of men and friends has left the world, — Phillips Brooks. One month ago this morning he breathed his last. He, with whom it was impossible to associate the idea of death; — was? — is so, still! — the most living man I ever knew — physically, mentally, spiritually. It is almost like taking the sun out of the sky. He was such an illumination, such a warmth, such an inspiration! And he let us all come so near him, — just as Christ does!
I felt that I knew Christ personally through him. He always spoke of Him as his dearest friend, and he always lived in perfect, loving allegiance to God in Him. Now I know him as I know Christ, — as a spirit only, and his sudden withdrawal is only an ascension to Him, in the immortal life. Shut into my sick-room, I have seen none of the gloom of the burial; I know him alive, with Christ, from the dead, forevermore. Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now. "What a new splendor in heaven!" was my first thought of him, after one natural burst of sorrow. What great services he has found! How gloriously life, with its immortal opportunities, must be opening to him! He, — one week here, — the next there, — and seen no more here again. The very suddenness of his going makes the other life seem the real one, rather than this. And a man like this is the best proof God ever gives human beings of their own immortality.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now." by Lucy Larcom?

Lucy Larcom 25

American teacher, poet, author 1824–1893

Related quotes

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 563.

“Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 39

“From one viewpoint there were (potentially) a multiplicity of Gleisters; but from another viewpoint there was only one, and he was that one. After all, it didn’t matter what these other people called themselves or where they came from; he was only the person he was here and now, the person whom he experienced. Reality is positional, ego is relational, and nature doesn’t deal in abstractions.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (p. 19)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Some think that He does not call her 'mother' but only 'woman' so as not to inflict a deeper wound of sorrow on her heart. I do not reject this; but another conjecture is no less probable, that Christ wanted to show that now that He has completed the course of human life, He puts off the condition in which He has lived and enters into the heavenly kingdom where He will rule over angels and men. For we know that Christ's custom always was to recall believers from looking at the flesh. This was especially necessary at His death.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on John 19:26
St John

“He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realised that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 28
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight

“Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben
Der täglich sie erobern muß.
Variant translations:
Freedom and life are earned by those alone
Who conquer them each day anew.
trans. Walter Kaufmann
He only earns his freedom and existence,
Who daily conquers them anew.
trans. Bayard Taylor
Act V, Court of the Palace
Faust, Part 2 (1832)