De profundis

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

‘Whatever happens to oneself happens to another.

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.

Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.

It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind.

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

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

I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy.

Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.