"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us"
About this Quote
The subtext is a rebuke to scarcity thinking. Keller isn’t arguing that people don’t die, relationships don’t end, or absence doesn’t hurt. She’s arguing that the self is cumulative. What you’ve lived doesn’t vanish; it changes your internal architecture: how you trust, what you notice, what you’re capable of enduring. That’s why the line lands as more than comfort-card sentiment. It offers a theory of permanence that doesn’t depend on denial.
Context sharpens the intent. Keller, deaf and blind from early childhood, built a public life around translating limitation into agency. Read through that biography, “never lose” sounds less like wishful thinking and more like hard-earned method: when the world can take away sensory access, physical proximity, even autonomy, you learn to locate permanence elsewhere. The rhetoric is simple enough to be recited at funerals, but its real power is existential: love is not only something you feel; it’s something that edits you, permanently.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Keller, Helen. (2026, January 14). What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-have-once-enjoyed-we-can-never-lose-all-14131/
Chicago Style
Keller, Helen. "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-have-once-enjoyed-we-can-never-lose-all-14131/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-have-once-enjoyed-we-can-never-lose-all-14131/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.









