⁸ What advantage have the wise over fools?^(A)
What do the poor gain
    by knowing how to conduct themselves before others?

“The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
    What then do I gain by being wise?”^(B)
I said to myself,
    “This too is meaningless.”
¹⁶ For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;^(C)
    the days have already come when both have been forgotten.^(D)
Like the fool, the wise too must die!^(E)

19 Better the poor whose walk is blameless
    than a fool whose lips are perverse.^(A)