"Ecclesiastes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... events come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked: to the good and to the clean and to the unclean," &c. (Ecclesiastes, ix. v. 2); and (v. 3), "This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all." In what sense "evil" is meant here seems rather doubtful. There is no doubt about the emperor's meaning. ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... higher in that motley collection of national literature which, extending over many generations of authorship, streaked with strayed fragments of Aramaic, varying from the idyll of Ruth to the apocalyptic dreams of Daniel, and deprived by Job and Ecclesiastes of even a rambling epical unity, is naturally obnoxious to criticism when put forward as one uniform Book, still more when put forward as uniformly divine. For my part I am more lost in wonder over the people that produced and preserved and the Synagogue that ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... cannot be expressed, for there was never none like to him, ne never shall none come after him like unto him. He made the book of the parables containing thirty-one chapters, the book of the Canticles, the book of Ecclesiastes, containing twelve chapters, and the book of Sapience containing nineteen chapters. This King Solomon loved overmuch women, and specially strange women of other sects; as King Pharaoh's daughters and many other of the gentiles. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... side by side! The Book of Ruth, with its pastoral quiet after the wars of the Judges, like an innocent child which has crept between the ranks of hostile armies; the intense devotion of the Psalms after the speculative discussions of Job, and before the practical wisdom of Proverbs; the gloom of Ecclesiastes, and then the sweetness of the Song of Solomon, as sharply divided as the eastern morning which leaps from the night, or, as an old Greek might have said, silver-footed Thetis rising from the bed of old ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... "'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven ... a time to mourn and a time to dance.... He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.' Ecclesiastes iii. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a slave of his wife, he is also not to be too submissive; 'that will cause her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have an eye to the expenditure. She may keep the keys, but he will control the pocket-book. The model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges; she could not only consider a piece of ground, but she could buy it if she liked it. Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel. 'Let all the keys hang at her girdle, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... forth the tolbooth for the night; but, Master Gilhaize, be none discomforted thereat, your wife and your little one will come back in the morning, and your lot is a lot of pleasure; for is it not written in the book of Ecclesiastes, fourth and eighth, 'There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother?' and such ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Ecclesiastes seems to have had the same thought in his mind, when he says, "He who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." I have not written the above with the object of drawing the conclusion, that ignorance is more excellent ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... where the tree falleth, there it shall be." So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been 291:21 transformed into the popular proverb, "As the tree falls, so it must lie." As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be 291:24 after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Staples, "of the sad burden of Ecclesiastes, the mournfulest book of Scripture; because, while the preacher dwells with earnestness upon the vanity and uncertainty of the things of time and sense, he has no apparent hope of immortality to relieve ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... So teaches Ecclesiastes ix: "Go thy way with joy, eat and drink, and know that God accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... built to the eastward of the churchyard and the ruins of the town, and, facing the sparkling river, squarely turned its back upon the quiet desolation at the upper end of the island and upon the text from Ecclesiastes. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... with the date "Jan. 19" added; whence I infer that, whatever Canne at Amsterdam had to do with the printing of the tract, it was virtually a London publication, and out in January, 1643-4. On the title-page is quoted the text Ecclesiastes iii. 19, thus—"That which befalleth the sonnes of men befalleth Beasts; even one thing befalleth them all: as the one dyeth so dyeth the other; yea they have all one breath, so that man hath no preheminence above a Beast; for all is vanity." This gives so far the key-note to the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the book of Ecclesiastes, setting forth both the necessity we are under to imagine, and the comfort that our imagining cannot ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... [Footnote: Wilna, 1852. German translation by J. Steinberg, Wilna, 1859.] It was the first time the love of Solomon for the Shulammite was celebrated—a sublime, exalted love sung in marvellous fashion. The joy of life trembles in all the fibres of the poet's heart.... Then, the old age of Ecclesiastes is contrasted strikingly with the youth of Solomon—the king disillusioned, skeptical, convinced of the vanity of love, beauty, and knowledge. All is dross, vanity of vanities! And the young romantic poet ends his work with the conclusion ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Testament verse has been running through my mind—from Ecclesiastes, I think. I don't remember it verbatim, ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... Proverbs part includes the books from Job to the Song of Solomon, and contains {49} many Hymns of prayer and praise; also discussions of deep problems of human nature and our relation to God (Job and Ecclesiastes); together with other things which stir us to a ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... that the so-called Canon of the Jews could not guarantee to us the value of the writings. Consequently, such books as Ruth and Esther, (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment,) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance. Ecclesiastes also seemed to me a meagre and shallow production. Chronicles I now learned to be not credulous only, but unfair, perhaps so far as to be actually dishonest. Not one of the historical books of the Old Testament could approve itself ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... interesting to notice the contrast between this book and that preceding it. The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches emphatically that "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity": and is thus the necessary introduction to the Song of Solomon, which shows how true blessing and satisfaction are to be possessed. In like manner our SAVIOUR'S ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... begins to feel the uncertainty of results and final values which attaches itself to everything. There is a deadening thought of uselessness which creeps into many men's minds—the thought which has been best expressed by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... conservative in the discussions relating to the age and authenticity of Holy Writ. The first edition of my Histoire Generale des Langues Semitiques, for instance, contains so far as regards the book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, several concessions to traditional opinions which I have since eliminated one after the other. In my Origines du Christianisme, upon the other hand, this reserved attitude has stood me in good stead, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... have been considered sufficient marks of God's displeasure, without causing the wisest of men to pen, and publish to the world, such a minute record of his madness, folly and misery, as we find in Ecclesiastes. But these shipwrecked mariners were divinely directed to pile up the sad memorials of their errors on the reefs where they were wrecked, as beacons of warning to all inexperienced voyagers on life's treacherous sea. The light-house is built by the same authority as the custom-house, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... colouring, and the majestic pageant of the world's progress appeared no more than a shadow too vain and futile to be worth while watching as it passed. Into a Slough of Despond, such as Solomon experienced when he wrote his famous "Ecclesiastes," Aubrey sank unconsciously, and,—to do him justice,—most unwillingly. His was naturally a bright, vivacious, healthy nature—but he was over- sensitively organised,—his nerves did not resemble iron so much as finely-tempered steel, which could not but suffer from ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... verse I should like to hang before every son of mine, though I had ten of them, that it might meet their eyes last ere the evening's sleeping, in the morning's first awakening. The ninth verse of the eleventh chapter of Ecclesiastes." ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... down to Malachi the points of contact are limited to details, but do not cease to occur; they occur also in the Psalms and in Ecclesiastes. Reminiscences of the Priestly Code are found nowhere but in the Chronicles and some of the Psalms. For that Amos iv. 11 is borrowed from Genesis xix. 29 is not a whit more clear than that the original of Amos i. 2 must be sought in ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... period, when men who really thought must have found the ground palpably shaking under them. Indications of such misgivings are to be found in the Psalms, those especially passing under the name of Asaph; and all through Ecclesiastes there breathes a spirit of deepest and saddest scepticism. But Asaph thrusts his doubts aside, and forces himself back into his old position; and the scepticism of Ecclesiastes is confessedly that of a man who had gone wandering after enjoyment; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... part, the Palestinian Gemara;[36] then, the Halakic Midrashim, such as the Mekilta, the Sifra, the Sifre,[38] and Haggadic compilations, such as the Rabbot,[39] the Midrash on the Song of Songs, on Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, and Samuel, the Pesikta,[40] the Tanhuma,[41] and the ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... ECCLESIASTES xii. 5 and 7. "Man shall enter into the house of his eternity, and the mourners shall go roundabout in the street.... And the dust shall return to the earth from whence it was, and the spirit shall return to God who ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... in London. Nobody wanted to read his books, other stars had risen in the East. His publisher had exclaimed with energy, as Borrow himself would relate, "I want to meet with good writers, but there are none to be had: I want a man who can write like Ecclesiastes." There is something tragic in the account that Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... are all open, and the casino, sacred by the royal presence of Christian, lures, with its sweet tones of operatic music, the prudish Englishman from thoughts of Paradise and the fourth commandment. Moses, Daniel, and the Chronicles are quite forgotten; and, putting Ecclesiastes in our pocket, we are going ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... flowering seems to be alluded to in Jeremiah i. 11, 12, where the Lord asks the prophet, "What seest thou?'' and he replies, "The rod of an almond-tree''; and the Lord says, "Thou hast well seen, for I will hasten my word to perform it.'' In Ecclesiastes xii. 5 it is saib the "almond-tree shall flourish.'' This has often been supposed to refer to the resemblance of the hoary locks of age to the flowers of the almond; but this exposition is not borne out by the facts of the case, inasmuch as the flowers of the almond are not white but pink. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... live therein, shall be his servants. He shall be gifted with nine-tenths of all the wisdom and knowledge which Allah has granted to mankind, and understand not only the languages of men, but those also of beasts and birds.'" Some recollection of this appears in Ecclesiastes (x. 20), where we read, "For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter," and in our own familiar saying "a little bird told me," as well as in the Bulbul-hezar or talking bird of the Arabian Nights, and its imitation "the little green ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... it the stern preacher, who criticises all, high and low; priest, dervish, and Mystic—yea, even God himself? I venture to say that the real Omar is both; or, rather, he is something higher than is adequately expressed in these two words. The Ecclesiastes of Persia, he was weighed down by the great questions of life and death and morality, as was he whom people so wrongly call "the great sceptic of the Bible." The "Weltschmerz" was his, and he fought hard within himself to find that mean way which philosophers delight in pointing ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... in later works is credited with a matured philosophy, there can be little doubt that he has become a great name whose authority is invoked by later thought, much as Solomon was made the author of the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... learns little from the preceding, and that youth never will adopt the experience of age. But if experience went for anything, we should all come to a standstill; for there is nothing so discouraging to effort. Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspring of action. In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, and it is the source ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... verkaufe | sie nicht, Weisheit, Zucht und | Verstand. | | on the mercantilist spirit in Bacon | see: Julie Robin Salomon, Objectivity | in the Making. The John Hopkins | University Press, 1998. BEGINNING TO THE END{34}: declaring not | 34. Ecclesiastes 3,11 obscurely that God hath framed the mind of | Authorized Version: He hath made every man as a glass capable of the image of the | thing beautiful in his time: also he universal world, joying to receive the | hath set the world in their heart, so signature thereof ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... impartiality must certainly be "not proven," if indeed it be not stronger than that, to the attempt to deny to Solomon the authorship of Ecclesiastes based ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... dead. He knows that two or more persons were the authors of Isaiah. He knows that David did not write to exceed three or four of the Psalms. He knows that the Book of Job is not a Jewish book. He knows that the Songs of Solomon were not written by Solomon. He knows that the Book of Ecclesiastes was written by a Freethinker. He also knows that there is not in existence to-day—so far as anybody knows—any of the manuscripts of the Old or ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... education of a decade or an era. The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say that the departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individual character, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. It was perhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes said there is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest." It is by this character that we classify civilized and even semi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slow accumulation of inherent quality ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... them and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the door-posts of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard," Feigning insanity under distressing circumstances has been one of man's achievements throughout the centuries. It is spoken of in Ecclesiastes. Jeremiah says in regard to the wine cup: "And they shall drink and be moved and be mad." Nations also were poisoned by the wine cup, for Jeremiah says, "Babylon has been a golden cup in the Lord's hands, that made all the earth drunken. The nations have ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... In Ecclesiastes ii. 8, we read, "I gat me men singers and women singers, the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts." These last seven words represent only two in the original Hebrew, Shiddah-veshiddoth. These two words in the original Hebrew translated ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... go wherever they wanted it to, and stay where they put it, and do just as they said, every time. But this ain't that kind of a river. They have started in here with big confidence, and the best intentions in the world; but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say? Says enough to knock THEIR little game galley-west, don't it? Now you look at their methods once. There at Devil's Island, in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way, the water wanted to go another. So they put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Scobaria, having erected a school for divinity lectures, appointed Dr. Constantine to be reader therein. He immediately undertook the task, and read lectures, by portions, on the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles; and was beginning to expound the book of Job, when he was ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... characterized by a calm and rational philosophy, that recognized the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys them. Even Agnosticism, in so far as it is the confession of the inadequacy of every interpretation of the universe, finds despondent yet still earnest expression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, hopeful expression in Job; and the silence of many of the noblest natures of our age, which the churches brand as irreligious, finds place among the phases of religion in their ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... which Providence employed to transmit his precious thoughts and experiences to future ages, as the most valued inheritance he could bestow on posterity. What a precious legacy to the mind of the world was the book of "Ecclesiastes," yet by what bitter experiences was its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... one verse did the author of Ecclesiastes make use of the word vanity, in allusion to the seven stages ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Street and the Old South steeples as standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high" than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that "bad eminence," as I am sure that I should ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Hagiographa, consist of five books,—Job (author not known), Psalms (by various authors, about half by David), Proverbs (Solomon chiefly), Ecclesiastes (generally attributed to Solomon), Song ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... cast upon the names of Solomon and David by their alleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, if any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... upon the ethical ideas of the other writings of the Old Testament, the books of Wisdom, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Their teaching, while not particularly lofty, is generally healthy and practical, consisting of homely commonplaces and shrewd observations upon life and conduct. The motives appealed to are not always the highest, and frequently have regard only to earthly prosperity and worldly policy. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... remain the authentic lexicon, the recognised source of English words and constructions of the best period. The days of creation; the narratives of Joseph and his brethren, of Ruth, of the final defeat of Ahab, of the discomfiture of the Assyrian host of Sennacherib; the moral discourses of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom; the poems of the Psalms and the prophets; the visions of the Revelation,—a hundred other passages which it is unnecessary to catalogue,—will always be the ne plus ultra of English ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... at one in associating darkness with the grave, and all that the grave implies. "Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death." Homer and Ecclesiastes are one in love of the sunlit sky: "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." And Shakespeare ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Talleyrand in his own household; many and bitter have been the things said of his character and his career. He himself summed up his life in some words written shortly before his death, which read like another verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes:— ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... labor:—Ecclesiastes, 2:10: "For my heart rejoiced in my labor; and this was my portion of all ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... quote Ecclesiastes as their best sample of didactic epic, and others would fain rank as epics the tales of Naomi and Ruth, of Esther and Ahasuerus, and even the idyllic Song of Songs by Solomon. Early Christian writers also see in Revelations, or ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... about the terms of the bargain, and the two lovers were torn asunder, weeping and vowing eternal constancy; and in three weeks the lady was led a smiling bride to the altar, leaving Scythrop half distracted. His father, to comfort him, read him a commentary on Ecclesiastes, of his own composition; it was thrown away upon Scythrop, who retired to his tower as dismal and disconsolate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... I left my bed, I pondered over the events and conduct of the preceding day, but not with satisfaction, or self approbation. The seventh chapter of Ecclesiastes came fresh to my mind. I said to myself, adversity and constraint are more favorable to wisdom, than liberty and prosperity; or to express it in better words—"sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... jovial good fellow. The two effigies on the other side of the door might perhaps invite attention if they were not so completely crushed by the third. Again a question. By what right does the author of that admirable book 'Ecclesiastes' find a place in these ranks ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wisdom to make that the thing which we are most unwilling to think about. I do not want to be a kill-joy; I do not want to take anything out of the happy buoyancy of youth. I would say, as even that cynical, bitter Ecclesiastes says, 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.' By all means; only take all the facts into account, and if you have joys which shrivel up at the touch of this thought, then the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and read the following portion from that wonderful book, so little understood, because it is so full of wisdom—the Book of Ecclesiastes:— ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... friend of Pico della Mirandola, and the umpire chosen by the quarrelling factions in the University of Padua. John Reuchlin, chief of the humanists, was taught Hebrew by Obadiah Sforno, a savant of profound scholarship, who dedicated his "Commentary on Ecclesiastes" to Henry II. of France. Abraham de Balmes was a teacher at the universities of Padua and Salerno, and physician in ordinary to Cardinal Dominico Grimani. The Kabbala was made accessible to the heroes of the Renaissance by Jochanan Alemanno, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... without further preface, he proceeded to exhort them to well-doing in all the duties of life—as masters and mistresses, as servants, as parents, as children, as brothers, as fellow-Christians; while at the end of each rambling and emphatic passage there came in a verse from Ecclesiastes: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... seen to be by this light! Better would it be for the wretched madmen high in station, stupid and vicious, to be of low estate, that neither in the world nor after this life they should be so infamous. Truly for such Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: "There is a sore evil that I have seen under the Sun; namely, riches kept for the ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... the expressions in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the later prophets, the doctrine is distinctly announced in one of the most sublime of the Psalms (xc), one attributed to ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Bird Told Me—The origin of this phrase is doubtless to be found in Ecclesiastes, x, 20:—For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... simply a highly spiced story of female frailty; hence I approached it with "long teeth"'—like a politician eating crow, or a country boy absorbing his first glass of lager beer. I had received a surfeit of the Camillean style of literature in my youth before I learned with Ecclesiastes the Preacher—or even with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... departments of English literature to such an extent that you can scarcely read a masterpiece in which there is not some conscious or unconscious reference to them. Another book of philosophical importance is Ecclesiastes, where, in addition to much proverbial wisdom, you will find some admirable world-poetry—that is, poetry which contains universal truth about human life in all times and all ages. Of the historical books and the law books I do not think that it is important to read much; the literary element ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... man can never be sufficiently thankful." [2] [Thankful to whom? one might ask parenthetically.] In other words, he is a bland optimist, and has nothing but vials of contempt to pour upon the pessimists, from Ecclesiastes down to Carlyle. Pessimism, we are told confidentially, is not an outcome of just reasoning on the miserable residue of hope which materialism leaves to us, but of the indisposition "of those digestive organs upon ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... only two men could have a right to answer the question asked in the Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago: "That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" These two men are Captain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... conqueror with his charm. Had he only had a little ordinariness in his composition to harden him, he would almost certainly have ended as the leading Irish statesman of his day. He was undoubtedly ambitious of success in the grand style. But with his ambition went the mood of Ecclesiastes, which reminded him of the vanity of ambition. In his youth he adhered to Herbert Spencer's much-quoted saying: "What I need to realize is how infinitesimal is the importance of anything I can do, and how infinitely important it is that I should do it." But, while with Spencer ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... truth that the same loving Friend must needs deal out rewards to the good and chastisement to the bad. That was the simple faith of an early time, when problems like those which tortured the writers of the seventy-third Psalm, or of Job and Ecclesiastes, had not yet disturbed the childlike trust of the friend of God, because no facts in his experience had forced them on him. But the belief which was axiomatic to him, and true for his supernaturally shaped life with its special miracles ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... a ferment of bitterness. The happiest times in life are when one can just live along and enjoy things as they happen. If you have to be endlessly speculating, watching, and making mental notes, your brain-gears soon get a hot box. The original of all paragraphers—Ecclesiastes—came very near ending as a complete cynic; though in what F. P. A. would call his "lastline," he managed to wriggle into a ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Ecclesiastes (see Koheleth) Ecclesiasticus, dropped leaves causing transposition of chapters in Elephantiasis Eternal justice, Job's belief in Koheleth's belief in Evil (see Good and Evil) Ewald and the laws ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Ecclesiastes, Solomon, And lots of those who've passed before us, Denounced all foolishness and fun, Not so the gay and blithesome Horace; And Shakespeare's Jaques, somewhat hotly, Declared ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Writings of Moses. 6. Particular Introduction to the several Books of the Old and New Testaments. 7. Hebrew Poetry, including Figurative and Symbolical Language of Scripture. 8. Interpretation of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. 9. Epistles to Romans, Corinthians, Timothy, and I Peter. 10. Nature and Fulfilment of Prophecy, particularly in reference to the Messiah. 11. Interpretation of Isaiah, Zechariah, and Nahum. 12. The Revelation, in ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies |
