De Profundis

by Oscar Wilde

It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.

‘Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.’

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning.

Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningl...

It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.

Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share.

I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.

But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die.

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.