“I Was No Longer the Captain of My Soul”

Before you set out on a semester of sensuality, before you go lower to feel higher, before you trade in godly character for a hip caricature, consider these wise words from an unlikely source:

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. . . .Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search for new sensation. The paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion.

I grew careless of the lives of others.

I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on.

I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top.

I ceased to be lord over myself.

I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it.

I allowed pleasure to dominate me.

I ended in horrible disgrace. (Oscar Wilde, quoted by Gordon MacDonald in Ordering Your Private World)