"Ecclesiastes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given in Ecclesiastes For divers works," I told him. "Is there one For saying nothing in return for nothing? If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes, And they were like two cold inquiring points Of a sharp metal. ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... receptive; the worthlessness of all merely secular attainment, however desirable, however necessary, when weighed in the balance against "the one thing needful." The congregation still are boys, but soon they will be men. Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned—dark in various ways and senses, darkest when, at the University or elsewhere, we first are bidden to cast faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be demonstrated by "an appeal, in the last resort, to the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... however, in a few of these books, several good teachings and beautiful maxims of morals, as in the Proverbs attributed to Solomon, in the book of Wisdom and of Ecclesiastes; but this same Solomon, the wisest of their writers, is also the most incredulous; he doubts even the immortality of the soul, and concludes his works by saying that there is nothing good but to enjoy in peace the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... through a very strange text. He was so much depressed he thought of committing suicide, and then his eye fell on that verse in Ecclesiastes, "A living dog is better than a dead lion." [Footnote: Eccles. ix. 4.] The words brought fresh hope to him. He said to himself, One thing is certain and that is, I am still a living man, and he was then led to seek Christ as the Way, the Truth ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... civil war, make women even more than in real life the creatures of their masters: hence from the dawn of literature to the present day the sex has been the subject of disappointed abuse and eulogy almost as unmerited. Ecclesiastes, perhaps the strangest specimen of an "inspired volume" the world has yet produced, boldly declares "One (upright) man among a thousand I have found; but a woman among all have I not found" (vol. vii. 28), thus confirming the pessimism ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... dispensation, whereby all men are declared equal in the sight of God—nevertheless it does contain a very lofty law of righteousness applicable to all mankind. It is because of their universality that the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, as also many passages in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the minor prophets, have made an undying appeal to the human race. But the Jewish religion now takes its stand on the Talmud rather than on the Bible. "The modern Jew," one of its latest Jewish translators observes, "is ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expression. That which comes next to it, I think, is the jaded morning countenance of the debauchee in the second plate of the Marriage Alamode, which lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in Ecclesiastes.] ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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 ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... resolved upon a new explication of the holy bible, and among others of the godly and learned in the ministry, Mr. Blair had the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes assigned to him for his part, but he neglected that task, till he was rendered useless for other purposes, and then set about and finished his commentary on the Proverbs in 1666. He composed also some small poetical pieces, as a poem in commendation of Jesus Christ, for the confutation ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 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. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... lies. A man must look out for himself. If 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 at thine, so shalt thou know what thou dost ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... one verse did the author of Ecclesiastes make use of the word vanity, in allusion to the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... it is really curious to see by what devices some very insignificant personages have endeavored to make their own names conspicuous in the crowd. Generally speaking the inscription books and walls of distinguished places tend to give great force to the Vulgate rendering of Ecclesiastes i. 15, "The number ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... been 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
... lay or clerical, gentle or simple, as far as I can remember, do their duty in any wise, even if they recollect that they have any duty to do. Greed, chicane, hypocrisy, uselessness are the ruling laws of human society. A new book of Ecclesiastes, crying, "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity;" the "conclusion of the whole matter" being left out, and the new Ecclesiastes rendered thereby diabolic, instead of like that old one, divine. For, instead of "Fear God and keep his commandments, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... 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; Isaiah's majestic sweep of eagle ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... a devotional character were, one on 'The Gift of Prayer,' a formal and elaborate treatise with many divisions and subdivisions, in spirit earnest and devout. Its companion treatise, 'Ecclesiastes; or the Gift of Preaching,' shows a high conception of the learning which he thought necessary for one who would preach well; knowledge of commentators; of preachers, especially of English sermon-writers; of works on Christian doctrine, on the history of Christianity; of all subjects which can ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... most important chapters of divine revelation, was thrown open wide before them. The truths that they read there, as their eyes were divinely opened to see it, are recorded in the wisdom books of the Old Testament,—Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... That late did scorn him; And you that did rebel, Crave pardon of him; With speed turn a new leaf For your transgresses; Hear what the preacher sayes In Ecclesiastes, - The Scripture's true, and shall Ever be taught; Curse not the King at all, No, not in thy thought: And holy Peter Two commandments doth bring, - Is first for to fear God, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... 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
... all true. How the Jewish genius had gone to the heart of things, so that the races that hated it found comfort in its Psalms. No sense of form, the end of Ecclesiastes a confusion and a weak repetition like the last disordered spasms of a prophetic seizure. No care for art, only for reality. And yet he had once thought he loved the Greeks better, had from childhood yearned after forbidden gods, thrilled by that solitary marble figure of a girl that looked ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?—Ecclesiastes ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... fragment of Old Testament verse has been running through my mind—from Ecclesiastes, I think. I don't remember it verbatim, but it's something ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... the Book of Ecclesiastes, which has been for many centuries generally attributed to Solomon the son of David. I say generally, because, not only among later critics, but even among the ancient Jewish Rabbis, there have been those who doubted or denied that ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins |
