De Profundis

by Oscar Wilde

But if after I am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly.

of mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share in.

If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. But that could not be. I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something ...

have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, an...

Art only begins where Imitation ends,

I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow.

say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them.

We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all.