taedium vitae

This taedium vitae, he explains, grows out of Werther’s reading: The soulful proto-Romantic mediates the world through books rather than taking part directly in life.

It emphasizes the fact that the most important remedy for that very serious affection taedium vitae, that sense of the unsatisfactoriness of life which comes to everybody at some time or other, is the doing of things for other people with a whole-hearted feeling of helpfulness.

This makes even the minor acts of life produce a satisfaction not otherwise possible and gives a new significance to life when the novelty of living has worn off and when the taedium vitae, the tiredness with life that comes to every one after a while, if mere human motives prevail, steals over us.

Menzhinsky died of what Europeans still call taedium vitae.

Thus to Seneca, with all his theoretical indifference to things external to the virtuous will, with all his admiration for the invulnerable wisdom, withdrawn in the inner citadel of the soul, and defying the worst that tyrants or fortune could inflict, the taedium vitae became almost unendurable.