Chateaubriand belonged to an old aristocratic family, almost died defending the Monarchy in the French revolution, & was embraced by Napoleon only to be exiled. His books were so influential that a young Victor Hugo said: “I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.” What made him great?

Despite fighting wars, living through revolutions, and making friends and enemies among powerful Emperors, Chateaubriand was haunted by boredom all his life. To a friend he wrote: I began to be bored in my mother’s womb, and since then I have never been anything but bored.”

Nothing seemed to excite Chateaubriand: “Everything wearies me: I haul my boredom through my days like a chain, and everywhere I go I yawn away my life.” He got bored even while retelling his eventful stories: “The sound of my voice becomes intolerable to me; I hold my tongue."

Boredom pushed him to the ends of the Earth for adventure: “After suffering poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses.”

Discontentment is a gift. It makes you do more: “I have viewed closely the rarest disasters, the greatest good fortune, the highest reputations. I have been present at sieges, conclaves, at the restoration and demolition of thrones. I have made history, and been able to write it.

Boredom is good because it pushes you away from the trivial towards more eventful pastures. But repeat action is often needed to turn a rough stone into a sleek work of art: Chateaubriand knew this: “I have never abandoned any project worth the trouble of completing.”

Chateaubriand had the Talented Generalist’s Curse - he had a “natural aptitude for almost everything.” He liked “amusing things as well as serious ones.” How he managed to get things done: “Even when I grow weary of my object, my persistence is always greater than my boredom.”

Chateaubriand on perfection: “Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant."

Chateaubriand called himself a “bizarre androgyne forged by the divergent bloods of my mother and my father.” He was simultaneously a “man of dreams” and a “man of realities.” He was “passionate yet methodical” - a thoughtful writer living an action hero’s life.

Chateaubriand on his friend Joubert: “He had adopted an idea of perfection that prevented him from finishing anything.” Joubert himself wrote: “I am like an Aeolian harp that makes beautiful sounds & plays no tune.” Chateaubriand thus understood that perfectionism was paralysis.