The chosen few

... [William James] gave special attention to the people he called the “sick souls,” those whose inner lives were marked by melancholy or fear, people who felt the world’s brokenness with burning intensity. Instead of dismissing them as unstable, he saw them as people who grasped the seriousness of life. Their suffering, he believed, was a sign that their hearts were tuned to deeper realities. ... 

More. 

On the benefits of Lenten fasting

After much solitariness, fasting, or long sickness,

their brains were addle, and their bellies as empty

of meat as their brains of wit.

-- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1577-1640) 

Poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

If there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy.

-- Francis Bacon

Old Samuel Johnson's witty lines about a hermit mock these by a young John Milton

 

And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage,

The hairy gown and mossy cell,

Where I may sit and rightly spell

Of ev'ry star that heav'n doth shew,

And ev'ry herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures Melancholy give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

-- John Milton, Il Penseroso (c. 1631) 

The procurator Festus thought Paul's madness was caused by his great learning, whereas others might have blamed a devil as in the case of Jesus

Frontispiece, Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton, 1638

And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.

 -- Acts 26:24f.

There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?

-- John 10:19f.

Perfect freedom eludes us

From Carol Zaleski on Samuel Johnson, here, who with fine turns of phrase has captured the humanity and wisdom of the man who navigated the divide between pre-modern and modern man more heroically than any English writer before or since:

'No writer has more convincingly described the failure to “scheme life,” the near futility of hygienic self-improvement. Not piety alone, but piety weathered by illness, disfigurement, financial worries, marital difficulties, overwork, and hereditary melancholy (to the point that he feared madness), as well as his bungled attempts at self-discipline, made Johnson skeptical of the Enlightenment ideal of autonomy. He was a kind and courageous man (notwithstanding his well-known combativeness in debate), full of charity, whose setbacks inoculated him against spiritual pride.'