eimi

Love urges one thing: reason another. I see, and I desire the better: I follow the worse.
—Medea, Ovid’s Metamorphoses

I follow whatever is bad for me
And shun the things that might be good for me.
When I’m in Rome I want to be at Tibur;
When I’m at Tibur I want to be in Rome.
—Horace, Epistles 1.8 (Trans. David Ferry)

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
—Paul, Romans 7:15 (ESV)

    Indeed at first Man was a treasure,
A box of jewels, shop of rarities,
    A ring, whose posie was, My pleasure:
He was a garden in a Paradise:
                Glorie and grace
            Did crown his heart and face.

    But sinne hath fool’d him. Now he is
A lump of flesh without a foot or wing
    To raise him to a glimpse of blisse:
A sick toss’d vessel, dashing on each thing;
                Nay, his own shelf:
            My God, I mean my self.
—From George Herbert,  “Miserie”

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