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I am looking for a poem written by an English nobleman, Sir ________, in the poem is a stanza or possibly just one line, "there is no greater folly than the spirit of melancholy". Asking here because freepers know just about everything.

...What happened? How did my beloved country get in this shape!?

PARIS - Do artists have to be miserable to produce great art? A new exhibition in France suggests that a little inner darkness helps. "Melancholy — Genius and Insanity in the Western World," which has visitors lining up around the block at Paris' Grand Palais, is anything but depressing. "Long Live Melancholy!" one highbrow French magazine raved in its review. The dazzlingly extensive look at art from antiquity to the 21st century shows how troubled thoughts have inspired great painters, sculptors, philosophers and writers. "Melancholy is not only negative," curator Gerard Regnier said in an interview. "On the contrary, it...

The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That...

BookshopA Philosophy of BoredomLars Fredrik Svendsen; translation by John Irons Reaktion Books, 192pp, £14.95 ISBN 1861892179 Reviewed by Tom Hodgkinson Lars Svendsen's inquiry is a good, solid practical work of philosophy, in the tradition of Aristotle's Ethics and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. He has a light touch and a playful attitude, and draws on a wide range of texts, from Martin Heidegger and Samuel Beckett to Iggy Pop and the Pet Shop Boys. The opening section is particularly strong. I was fascinated to learn that boredom was invented in 1760; the word is not found in English prior to this,...

On the FreeRepublic front page, it says, "Free Republic does not advocate violence or an overthrow of the government." Does this not apply to narco-anarchists? The use of narcotics is violent. Free use of narcotics would disrupt and overthrow our very capacity to function in a nation of self-governance and thereby is counter to our social contract (including the Declaration, by which our Constitution must be interpreted). Thanks for your attention. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.