"Ecclesiastes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lord kindly sent further help, when we were again destitute of the means of providing for tomorrow. I received 20l. (half for the Orphan-Fund, and half for the other funds), with Ecclesiastes ix. 10: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... 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 up a stone wall. But what does the river care ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tumbling down)—Ver. 114. Warner remarks that a sentiment not unlike this is found in Scripture, Ecclesiastes, x. 18: "By much slothfulness, the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through." It may be also observed that the passage is very similar to the words of the parable of the foolish man who built his house upon sand, St. Matthew, vii. 26: "And the rain descended, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... thus responsible for the paralysis of Japanese civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone, Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a whole library of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... quarrelled 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... soul grows more enlarged; and every day the power to put our best attainments to use diminishes. "And how dieth the wise man? As the fool. Therefore I hated life; yea, I hated all my labour that I had taken under the sun." The poem is, indeed, an Ecclesiastes of pagan religion. The assurance of extinction is the worm which gnaws at the heart ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... subsequent post-exilic prophets 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
... immortality. However this may be, we may at any rate agree that body comes UP and spirit comes DOWN, and they consort here together for a few decades: then the body undoubtedly returns as dust to dust, and "the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes). But there would be no evolution and no fulfilment of purpose if the spirit were not to return a richer and more developed spirit by reason of its sojourn in the flesh: there would be stagnation, just a simple ineffectual turning ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... 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 ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... 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 teaching in the fourth of John points out in a word the powerlessness ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... 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 ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... family of scolding women, and a foolish son—might 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 ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... obsequious attitude of an advocate. Solomon looks like a 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 ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Interpretation of the Historical 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 ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... hurricanes and typhoons occur, and the monsoons are made to blow—the harmattan on the west coast of Africa; the simoon, with its deadly breath, in Arabia; the oppressive sirocco in the Mediterranean. What I have said will explain that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes, 1st chapter, 6th verse, which shows the exactness of the sacred writers whenever they do introduce scientific subjects: 'The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.' ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to-morrow, could be satisfied while they lasted by nothing short of the absolute ideal, the all-perfect, the infinite—or, to put away abstractions, 'My soul thirsteth for God, the living God!' 'He hath put eternity in their heart,' as the book of Ecclesiastes says. Longings and aspirations, weaknesses and woes, the limits of creature helps and loves, the disproportion between us and the objects around us—all these facts of familiar experience do witness, alike by blank misgivings and by bright hopes, by many disappointments and by indestructible expectations ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... inspired poets and writers in all 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 ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... face turning backward over her lover's shoulder. All his life Andrew had been a reader of the Bible, as had his father and mother before him. To-day, ever since he had heard of his good fortune, his mind had dwelt upon certain verses of Ecclesiastes. Now he quoted from them. "Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity, for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labor which thou ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Ecclesiastes doth somewhere confess that there are an infinite number of fools. Now when he speaks of an infinite number, what does he else but imply, that herein is included the whole race of mankind, except some very few, which ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... he is not to make 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, but the purse ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Book of Ecclesiastes Explained, Critically and Popularly. By James M. Macdonald, D. D. ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, entreated that it might be averted, and afterwards acquiesced! To the disordered mind "all things are out of course." This is the spirit which pervades the whole of the Ecclesiastes. There were two things which were perpetually suggesting themselves to the mind of Solomon; the intolerable sameness of this world, and the constant desire for change. And yet that same world, spread before the serene eye of God, was pronounced to be ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... 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 than knowledge, or that a wise man is on a par with a fool in controlling ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... was 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
... 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 ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... 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 ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... their wives, and wives what was due from their husbands. The unpleasant sayings about "better to dwell on the house-top" and "the perpetual dropping on a very rainy day" were called to mind by thousands. Almost the whole of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were contributed, in the merest fragments, in this way. As for Solomon's "times for every thing," few could remember them all, but every body remembered some. Undertakers said there was a "time to mourn," and comedians ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... earth that his mind undergoes the eclipse of scepticism. No follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly against the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; and there are passages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of Scripture, which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human reason originates. Even the Sceptics of antiquity refrained carefully from the mysteries of theology, and in entering the temples of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... conscience the 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 and visible divine guard, is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... it 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 ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... that the scripture much commendeth tribulation as occasion of more profit than wealth and prosperity, not only to those who are therein but to those who resort unto them too. And therefore saith Ecclesiastes, "Better is it to go to the house of weeping and wailing for some man's death, than to the house of a feast; for in that house of heaviness is a man put in remembrance of the end of every man, and while he liveth he thinketh what shall come after." And ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... 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 Tithonus; ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... said Elder 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 dark picture. Like Horace, he sees nothing better than to eat his bread with joy and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... madness and how much vice are 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
... Nightmare Abbey, and was half distracted on the occasion. It was his first disappointment, and preyed deeply on his sensitive spirit. His father, to comfort him, read him a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which he had himself composed, and which demonstrated incontrovertibly that all is vanity. He insisted particularly on the text, 'One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman amongst all those ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... whereas the human soul is produced by God. To signify this it is written as to other animals: "Let the earth bring forth the living soul" (Gen. 1:24): while of man it is written (Gen. 2:7) that "He breathed into his face the breath of life." And so in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes (12:7) it is concluded: "(Before) the dust return into its earth from whence it was; and the spirit return to God Who gave it." Again the process of life is alike as to the body, concerning which it is written ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... accidental 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 in the evolution of the human ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... love to see the world, and to choose for yourselves, read that Book of Ecclesiastes, the saddest book on earth, and get a golden lesson in every verse of it. See how Solomon determined to see life, from the top to the bottom of it. How he "gave his heart to know, seek, and search ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... unsatisfying and disappointing it was!—to a degree which I was ashamed to own! How could I be so foolish, to give up a living, where there was vitality, though it was rough, for a superficial and artificial semblance of religion? In the book of Ecclesiastes we read, that "a living dog is better than a dead lion;" and though I had often quoted this saying, I never felt the truth of it so deeply as now. The dead lion and the dead elephant are quite immovable things for a live dog to bark at or fret about. It was a hard and trying ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... rationalist, I have none the less seemed a thorough 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 |
