http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/goldsmith_boring.html

what special depth there is in a child’s daydream! and how happy the child who really possesses his moments of solitude! it is a good thing, it is even salutary, for a child to have periods of boredom, for him to learn to know the dialectics of exaggerated play and causeless, pure boredom. alexander dumas tells in his ‘mémoires’ that, as a child, he was bored, bored to tears. when his mother found him like that, weeping from sheer boredom, she said: “and what is dumas crying about?” “dumas is crying because dumas has tears,” replied the six-year-old child. this is the kind of anecdote people tell in their memoirs. but how well it exemplifies absolute boredom, the boredom that is not the equivalent of the absence of playmates. there are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in the corner of a garret. how often have i wished for the attic of my boredom when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of all freedom!
(gaston bachelard / the poetics of space)