Oscar Wilde

The one thing that gave me comfort was the written word. In Miserere mei, Deus, I found a form of prayer. Behind the yellow bars of my cell I watched the sunrise, and for the first time understood how Christ had felt when he said, “I am the light of the world.”

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 center of pain.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was more terrible still.

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all.

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do.