"We should remember: Sorrow shared is sorrow diminished. If a friend of mine . . . gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit . . . But if . . . a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of his house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode by which disgrace could be inflicted upon me . . . he who can look upon the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realize something of the wonder in both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God's secret as any one can get."

Oscar Wilde
