Compared with the neat little nostrums of comfort-mongering minds who cross our t’s and dot our i’s, Ecclesiastes is as great, as deep, and as terrifying as the ocean. If this philosopher were alive today and knew the reigning philosophy in America, pop psychology, with its positive strokings, OKs, narcissistic self-befriendings, panderings, patronizings, and bland assurances of “Peace! Peace!” when there is no peace, I think he would quote John Stuart Mill that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; and William Barrett: “It is better to encounter one’s own existence in despair than never to encounter it at all.”
–Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life: Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity; Job: Life as Suffering; Song of Songs: Life as Love
