"Anyone who believes that happiness consists in riches and luxuries ought to be shown the many Croesuses here who, surrounded by every means of enjoyment, have lost the taste for all enjoyments, and whose souls die long before they themselves do. The is the English spleen! This moral sickness, which might also be called by a more Russian name -- boredom -- is known in all lands, but it is worse here than anywhere else because of the climate, the heavy food, and excessive quietude, so like sleep.
"What a strange creature man is! When he has cares and anxieties -- he complains; when he has everything, when he is carefree -- he yawns. Out of boredom the rich Englishman travels; out of boredom becomes a hunter, squanders money, marries, shoots himself. He is unhappy from happiness! I am speaking of the idle rich, whose grandfathers amassed fortunes in India, for those who are busy, directing world trade and devising new ways of playing with the imaginary needs of the people, do not know what spleen is."
-- from London, 1790, Letter of a Russian Traveler, 1789-1790, N. M. Karamzin, [Columbia University Press, NY, 1957], p. 333-334.
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