From Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

"But soon we shall die . . .and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.  But the love will have been enough;  all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.  Even memory is not necessary for love.  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."