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15 I thought to myself, “The same thing that happens to a fool will also happen to me. So why have I tried so hard to become wise?” I said to myself, “Being wise is also useless.” 16 Whether people are wise or foolish, they will still die, and no one will remember either one of them forever. In the future, people will forget everything both of them did. So the two are really the same.

Is There Real Happiness in Life?

17 This made me hate life. It was depressing to think that everything in this life is useless, like trying to catch the wind.

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15 Then I said to myself,

“The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
    What then do I gain by being wise?”(A)
I said to myself,
    “This too is meaningless.”
16 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;(B)
    the days have already come when both have been forgotten.(C)
Like the fool, the wise too must die!(D)

Toil Is Meaningless

17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.(E)

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