Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
- Date
- 1882
Meaning of “To be what we are, and to become…”
Stevenson’s formulation links self-acceptance with development: a worthwhile life is not imitation of someone else’s pattern but fuller realization of capacities that belong to one’s own character.
Where does it come from?
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, essay ‘Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions,’ section V, Project Gutenberg #425, transcribed from the 1896 Chatto & Windus edition. The surrounding paragraph quotes several Thoreau statements, but ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming...’ is Stevenson's own connective judgment before he returns to quoted Thoreau language. It therefore remains Stevenson literary-biographical criticism rather than a Thoreau quotation or a clinical rule about self-development.
