Ecclesiastes 9:7-15

⁷Go then, and eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with gladness: because thy works please God.

⁸At all times let thy garments be white, and let not oil depart from thy head.

⁹Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest, all the days of thy unsteady life, which are given to thee under the sun, all the time of thy vanity: for this is thy portion in life, and in thy labour wherewith thou labourest under the sun.

¹⁰Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: for neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening.

¹¹I turned me to another thing, and I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favour to the skillful: but time and chance in all.

¹²Man knoweth not his own end: but as fishes are taken with the hook, and as birds are caught with the snare, so men are taken in the evil time, when it shall suddenly come upon them.

¹³This wisdom also I have seen under the sun, and it seemed to me to be very great:

¹⁴A little city, and few men in it: there came against it a great king, and invested it, and built bulwarks round about it, and the siege was perfect.

¹⁵Now there was found in it a man poor and wise, and he delivered the city by his wisdom, and no man afterward remembered that poor man.