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. There was no
pleasure I did not experience. 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. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong
because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half
of the garden had its secrets for me also.--_De Profundis_.
THE GRAND ROMANTIC
It is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic, in the
sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as being the
nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some
divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being
the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary
desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to
a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest
man was not his aim.
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