Oscar Wilde - De Profundis

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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
Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.

Oscar Wilde
People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach them they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement.

Oscar Wilde
When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

Oscar Wilde
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

Oscar Wilde
If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly.

Oscar Wilde
Clergyman and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.

Oscar Wilde
Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is conversation.

Oscar Wilde
We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.

Oscar Wilde
Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.

Oscar Wilde
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.

Oscar Wilde
Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate.

Oscar Wilde
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world's sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.

Oscar Wilde
A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

Oscar Wilde
I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful

Oscar Wilde
All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death;

Oscar Wilde
I am very glad I have travelled. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one's prejudices.

Oscar Wilde
A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

Oscar Wilde
Dear little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

Oscar Wilde
For a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Oscar Wilde
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

Oscar Wilde
Friendship never forgets. That is the wonderful thing about it.

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

Oscar Wilde