The Emptiness of Pleasure

I said to myself, “Go ahead, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy what is good.” But it turned out to be futile.

I explored with my mind how to let my body enjoy life with wine and how to grasp folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—until I could see what is good for people to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy the good life.

There is a person without a companion, without even a son or brother, and though there is no end to all his struggles, his eyes are still not content with riches. “So who am I struggling for,” he asks, “and depriving myself from good?” This too is futile and a miserable task.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts.

When good things increase, the ones who consume them multiply; what, then, is the profit to the owner, except to gaze at them with his eyes?

Here is what I have seen to be good: it is appropriate to eat, drink, and experience good in all the labor one does under the sun during the few days of his life God has given him, because that is his reward.

A man may father a hundred children and live many years. No matter how long he lives, if he is not satisfied by good things and does not even have a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

For who knows what is good for man in life, in the few days of his futile life that he spends like a shadow? Who can tell man what will happen after him under the sun?

Wise Sayings

A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of one’s death than the day of one’s birth.

Wisdom is as good as an inheritance and an advantage to those who see the sun,

It is good that you grasp the one and do not let the other slip from your hand. For the one who fears God will end up with both of them.

There is certainly no righteous man on the earth who does good and never sins.

Everything is the same for everyone: there is one fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as for the one who takes an oath, so for the one who fears an oath.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy much good.

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hand rest, because you don’t know which will succeed, whether one or the other, or if both of them will be equally good.

For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.