De Profundis Quotes

“Самый большой порок — поверхностность.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Ricorda che lo stolto agli occhi degli dei e lo stolto agli occhi del mondo sono ben diversi.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Los dioses son caprichosos. No sólo nos imponen el castigo de nuestros vicios sino que nos pierden, utilizando lo que en nosotros hay de bueno, noble, tierno y humano.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Más tu también tuviste, como yo, en tu vida, una horrible tragedia, aunque de índole completamente opuesta a la mía. ¿Quieres saber cual ha sido? Pues esta: que en ti el odio pudo siempre más que el amor.”
― Oscar Wilde, De profundis

“Eu tenho o direito de partilhar a dor, e aquele que é capaz de olhar para os encantos do mundo, e partilhar a sua dor, e compreender um pouco a maravilha de ambos, está em contacto direto com as coisas divinas (...)”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Volmaakt vrij zijn, en te zelfder tijd volkomen in de ban zijn van de wet, dat is de eeuwige paradox van het menselijk leven, zoals wij die iedere moment in praktijk brengen (...)”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Out of the reckless dinners with you nothing remains but the memory that too much was eaten and too much was drunk.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“There are times when sorrow
seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of
the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other,
but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a
child or a star there is pain.”
― Wilde Oscar, De Profundis

“That is because one realises one's
soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired
culture, and all external possessions, be they good or evil.”
― Wilde Oscar, De Profundis

“So there were
Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The
unfortunate thing is that there have been none since. I make one
exception, St. Francis of Assisi.”
― WILDE OSCAR, De Profundis

“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

“Many men on their release carry their prison along with them into the air, hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length like poor poisoned things creep into some hole and die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong of Society that it should have to do. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishments on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself: that is to say it abandons him at the very moment when it's highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irredeemable wrong. I claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, Society should realise what it has inflicted on me: and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“But when he deals with the Winner that [Jesus] is the most romantic, in the sense most real. The world had always loved the Saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the Winner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoner's Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement by any means. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful, holy things, and modes of perfection. It sounds a very dangerous idea. It is so. All great ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That is the true creed I don't doubt myself.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Wherever there is hatred between two people there is a bond or brotherhood of some kind.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“There is not a single color 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. In one sense of the word it is of course necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. But to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Of course just as there are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squandering its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none since.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“All that Christ says to us by the way of a little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man’s nature that is not illuminated by the imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one’s table; and I do so not from hunger—I get now quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the type and fixed it, and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“That is because one realises one’s soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions, be they good or evil.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“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 am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless.  Yet there are worse things in the world than that.  I am quite candid when I say that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door.  If I got nothing from the house of the rich I would get something at the house of the poor.  Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share.”
― 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