Joshua Wolf Shenk Quote

In the fourth century, John Cassian described a condition among his fellow monks that he called acedia: a weariness or distress of heart . . . akin to dejection that took possession of unhappy souls and left them lazy, sluggish, restless, and solitary. Later, acedia became widely translated as sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, and blended with melancholy in the popular mind. Both required, at the very least, confession and penitence.