I said in my ecstasy: Every man is a liar

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

KJV Psalm 116.11:  I said in my haste, All men are liars.  

RSV Psalm 116.11:  I said in my consternation, "Men are all a vain hope."

LXX Psalm 115.2:   ἐγὼ εἶπα ἐν τῇ ἐκστάσει μου πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης

'Tis better to be lowly born . . .

I would rather be a poor beggar's wife and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world . . ..

 

Verily, I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born
And range with humble livers in content
Than to be perked up in a glist’ring grief
And wear a golden sorrow.

 

-- Anne Boleyn of Catherine, in William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act 2, scene 3

Beware of sadness

 

 Such a wantwit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself.

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 1

Look thou be true

 

 Look thou be true: do not give dalliance

Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw

To th' fire i' th' blood.

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

She dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun

 

 She her airie buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene 3 (the reading is Samuel Johnson's)

Trump betrays Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe

 Thou hast slain

The flower of Europe for his chivalry,

And treacherously hast thou vanquish'd him.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 3, Act 2, Scene 1

Bob's your uncle

 Tut, tut! grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.

-- William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 2, Scene 3

All's fair in love and war again

 

 Against such lewdsters, and their lechery,

Those that betray them do no treachery.     

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 3

We peevish Protestants, the angry Lutherans

 

  What though I know her virtuous,

And well deserving; yet I know her for

A spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to

Our cause.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act 3, scene 2

What's more miserable than discontent?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 My heart is drowned with grief,
Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,
My body round engirt with misery;
For what’s more miserable than discontent?

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1

Know thy nullity

 

 

 Thou art not thyself,
For thou exists on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.     

-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 3, scene 1

Pope Francis clearly believes in a little bit of depravity in each person, just not in total human depravity lol

 

Norah O'Donnell: When you look at the world what gives you hope?

Pope Francis (In Spanish/English translation): Everything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live. People forge ahead. And people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good. 

More.

 

Your average American Catholic, however, has faith in a caricature of Jesus of their own making, as gooey and sentimental as any Protestant's, as Samantha Stephenson demonstrates here. Their common Jesus never called anyone to repent, never said few would be saved, never warned of impending wrath.

Between the errors of total depravity and fundamental human goodness lies the correct view, mixed human nature. Like the scholastics of a by-gone era, however, the pope splits hairs in the wrong direction from this, landing on the side of human nature being more of a good mixture than the not totally bad mixture emphasized by Paul:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.  I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

-- Romans 7:14ff.

For his part Martin Luther, against the Reformed proponents of total depravity, affirmed that the Christian is simul justus et peccator, at the same time just and sinner, because of Christ.

The view was also Shakespeare's:

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.

The mother in the man

  I had not so much of man in me,

But all my mother came into mine eyes,

And gave me up to tears.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry V

Late stage civilization

 

Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk, mosaic, Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Italy

 

 Prosperity begins to mellow,

And drops into the rotten mouth of death.

-- William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 4, Scene 4

No fine people on either side

 While I am a beggar, I will rail,

And say there is no sin but to be rich:

And being rich, my virtue then shall be,

To say there is no vice but beggary.

-- William Shakespeare, History of King John, Act 2, Scene 1

He likes to think of hell as empty

 And all the devils are here.

-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down

... villainy is never at a stop ... crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin.

-- Samuel Johnson, General Observation on King Lear, 1765

What wretches feel when they give all

 

Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne’er turns the key to th’ poor.

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4

Two kings in man as well as herbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
  And vice sometime by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower
  Poison hath residence and medicine power: 

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each
  part; Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

 
Two such opposèd kings encamp them still
  In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will; 

And where the worser is predominant,
  Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

-- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3

Music was the opiate of the people long before religion ever was

 

 Ev'ry thing that heard him play,

Ev'n the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by;

In sweet musick is such art,

Killing care, and grief of heart,

Fall asleep, or hearing die.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII          

 

And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

 

-- I Samuel 16:23