'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
And has the nature of infinity.'


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. That something hidden away in my nature,
like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate
discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh
development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that
it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor
later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had
it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I
want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it
the elements of life, of a new life, VITA NUOVA for me. Of all
things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by
surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost
all things, that one knows that one possesses it.

Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I
ought to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as
that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external
sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an
individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest
value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a
fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with.
And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from
any possible bitterness of feeling against the world.

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. I would not
a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter
came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under
the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.
The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all.
You can see to what intensity of individualism I have arrived - or
am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and 'where I walk
there are thorns.'

Oscar Wild - De profundis