The dreadful burden of having nothing to do.

Boileau’s line treats idleness not as leisure but as a kind of oppression: when one has “nothing to do,” time ceases to be a gift and becomes a weight. The paradox—calling “nothing” a “burden”—suggests that purposelessness can be more exhausting than labor, breeding restlessness, boredom, and self-reproach. In a moral and classical tradition that prizes order, discipline, and the productive use of one’s faculties, the phrase implies that activity (whether work, study, or art) is a safeguard against the mind’s drift into dissatisfaction. The “dreadful” quality underscores how empty time can feel like a threat rather than a respite.