¹A good name is better than good oil, and the day of death than the day of being born.

²It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, since this is the end of every man, and the living will put it to his heart.

³Better is vexation than laughter, for with sadness of face, a heart goes well.

⁴The heart of the wise is in a house of mourning, and the heart of fools is in a house of gladness.

⁵It is better to listen to the rebuke of a wise person than someone who listens to the song of fools.

⁶For like the sound of the thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of the fool; and also this is vapor.

⁷For oppression makes a wise person boast, and a gift causes the heart to perish.

⁸Better is the end of a word than its beginning; better is one slow of breath than one high of breath.

⁹Do not be hasty in your breath to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.

¹⁰Do not say, "Why was it that the former days were better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.

¹¹Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and an advantage to those who see the sun.

¹²For to be in the shade of wisdom is to be in the shade of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves alive its owners.

¹³See the work of God; for who is able to straighten what he has made crooked?

¹⁴On a day of good, be in good; and on a day of evil, see; also this God has made side by side with that, for the reason that man will not find anything after him.

¹⁵I saw all in the days of my vapor: there is a righteous person who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked person who continues long in his evil.

¹⁶Do not be very righteous, and do not make yourself wise to excess — why should you be desolated?

¹⁷Do not act wickedly greatly, and do not be a fool — why should you die before your time?

¹⁸It is good that you take hold of this, and also from this, do not let your hand rest; for the one who fears God will go forth through all of them.

¹⁹Wisdom prevails for the wise one more than ten rulers who were in the city.

²⁰For there is no righteous man in the land who does good and does not sin.

²¹Also do not set your heart on all the words that people speak, so that you do not hear your servant making light of you.

²²For also many times your heart knows that you also have made light of others.

²³All this I tested by wisdom; I said, 'Let me be wise,' but it was far from me.

²⁴Far away is what has been, and deep, so deep: who can find it?

²⁵I turned about, I and my heart, to know, to explore, and to seek wisdom and reckoning, and to know the wickedness of stupidity, and the folly of madness.

²⁶And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is traps and nets, whose hands are bonds; the one who is good before God escapes from her, but the sinner is captured by her.

²⁷See, this I found, said the Preacher, one to one to find a reckoning;

²⁸which my being still sought, and I did not find: one man out of a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I did not find.

²⁹Only, see this I found: that God made humankind upright, but they sought out many devices.