Ecclesiastes 2:13 cpdv — And I saw that wisdom surpasses foolishness, so much so that they differ as much as light from darkness.

And all that my eyes desired, I did not refuse them. Neither did I prohibit my heart from enjoying every pleasure, and from amusing itself in the things that I had prepared. And I regarded this as my share, as if I were making use of my own labors.

But when I turned myself toward all the works that my hands had made, and to the labors in which I had perspired to no purpose, I saw emptiness and affliction of the soul in all things, and that nothing is permanent under the sun.

I continued on, so as to contemplate wisdom, as well as error and foolishness. “What is man,” I said, “that he would be able to follow his Maker, the King?”

The eyes of a wise man are in his head. A foolish man walks in darkness. Yet I learned that one would pass away like the other.

And I said in my heart: “If the death of both the foolish and myself will be one, how does it benefit me, if I have given myself more thoroughly to the work of wisdom?” And as I was speaking within my own mind, I perceived that this, too, is emptiness.

For there will not be a remembrance in perpetuity of the wise, nor of the foolish. And the future times will cover everything together, with oblivion. The learned die in a manner similar to the unlearned.