“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study,”44 wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in his Pensées. “He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”
