Some remarks about conditions in life
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📚✭A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.2 📚✭It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men; and the living should take it to his heart.
3 📚✭Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.
4 📚The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.
5 📚It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.
6 📚For the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. This also is emptiness.
7 📚Surely oppression makes a wise man foolish, and a bribe destroys the heart.
8 📚Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
9 📚Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit to anger, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.
10 📚Do not say, “Why is it that former days were better than these?” For you are not asking wisely concerning this.
11 📚✭Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and those who see the sun will have benefit from it.
12 📚For wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense, but the excellence of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to those who have it.
13 📚Consider the work of God; for who can straighten what he has made crooked?
14 📚Be happy in the day of prosperity, but in the day of adversity consider. God has made the one as well as the other, so that man should not discover what comes after him.
15 📚✭I have seen everything in the days of my futility. There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness. 16 📚✭Do not be too righteous; neither be overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 📚Do not be too wicked; neither be foolish. Why should you die before your time? 18 📚It is good for you to grasp the one, and not to let your hand go from the other; for he who fears God will depart from all extremes. 19 📚Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten mighty men who are in the city. 20 📚✭For there is not a just man on earth who does good and who does not sin. 21 📚Also do not take heed to every word that is spoken, or you may hear your servant curse you; 22 📚For also your own heart knows that you yourself have often cursed others.
His quest for wisdom
23 📚✭All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise”, but it was far from me. 24 📚Who can discover what is far off and exceedingly deep? 25 📚I applied my heart to know and to search and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, and of foolishness and madness; 26 📚And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands like chains. Whoever pleases God will escape from her, but the sinner will be taken by her. 27 📚✭Look, I have discovered this, says the teacher, adding one thing to another, to find out the explanation 28 📚✭which my soul is still seeking, but have not found: I have found one good man in a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all those. 29 📚✭Look, I have found only this: God has made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.