3 quotations linked to De Profundis by or associated with Oscar Wilde, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Sorrow, suffering, humiliation, memory, time, self-examination, art and Wilde’s attempt to reinterpret prison experience and personal loss.
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“Suffering is one very long moment.”
Severe suffering can collapse ordinary time into one continuous experience, making individual days feel less distinct than the pain that joins them.
De Profundis, public-domain 1913 Methuen text; the sentence appears in Wilde’s description of prison time and the apparent sameness of suffering.
“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.”
Sorrow can make a moment morally serious and deserving of care, attention, and humility rather than dismissal or forced positivity.
De Profundis; Wilde reflects on suffering as a source of seriousness, humility, and transformed perception.
“For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.”
Prolonged grief can make ordinary changes of season feel irrelevant because sorrow becomes the dominant measure of time and experience.
De Profundis, public-domain 1913 Methuen text; Wilde writes from prison about suffering, memory, humiliation, and the changed experience of time.
