De Profundis Quotes

“But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“When he [Christ] says 'Forgive your enemies', it is not for the sake of the enemy but for one's own sake that he says so, and because Love is more beautiful than Hate.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I have become.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. 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. It is well to have learned that.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star, there is pain”
― Oscar Wilde , De Profundis

“I blame myself without reserve for my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“Of course to one so modern as I am, `Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“The world loves the Saint, and Christ loves the sinner.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Con libertad, libros, flores y la luna, ¿quién no puede ser feliz?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“The unfortunate accident—for I like to think it was no more—that you had not yet been able to acquire the “Oxford temper” in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“He sees all the lovely influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. ”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that, if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books, and what joy can be greater?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.”
― Oscar Wilde, Epístola In carcere et vinculis

“In life there is really no great or small thing. All things are of equal value and of equal size.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Where there is Sorrow there is holy ground. Some day you will realise what that means. You will know nothing of life till you do. Robbie, and natures like his, can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and with bowed head I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity`s sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“My gods dwell in temples made with hands.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Then I must learn how to be happy.  Once I knew it, or thought I knew it, by instinct.  It was always springtime once in my heart.  My temperament was akin to joy.  I filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine.  Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be.  That is his punishment.  Those who want a mask have to wear it.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and Domine, non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“There is much more before me. I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I have a strange longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to me no less of a mother than the Earth. It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. When I think about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who CANNOT believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis