Ecclesiastes 2:1

He condemns pleasures as futile. For he says, "I said in my heart, Come hither, I will test you in merriment, and also in good, and this too is futility." For he did not give himself to this kind of experience straight away or slide into partaking of pleasures without having tasted the austere and more devout life. Rather, after training himself with these things and achieving in his character the severity and determination through which the lessons of wisdom come most readily to those who pursue them, he then descends to things considered agreeable to the senses. [He does this] not because he is drawn down to them by passion but in order to investigate whether the sensual experience of them makes any contribution to the knowledge of true Good. That is why he makes his own what he had originally regarded as alien, laughter, and calls the condition dizziness, in that it is equivalent in meaning to "frenzy" or "madness"; for what else would anyone properly call laughter? It is neither speech nor activity directed to any end but an unseemly loss of bodily control.

When a person has attained this knowledge, he condemns pleasure as vanity. Ecclesiastes next states "I said in my heart, 'Come now, I will prove you with mirth, and behold, you have good things, and behold, this also is vanity.' " He does not immediately submit himself to such an experience nor has he tasted a more severe, solemn life to obliterate pleasure; rather, Ecclesiastes experienced such things and pursued a sober, constant course of action which yields wisdom for those who pursue it. Ecclesiastes shrinks away from sense delights because passion does not attract him to these vanities; he believes that knowledge of the true good confers perception to anyone faithful to it. From the beginning the enemy indulges in laughter and mirth and calls passion anything mad or deranged. Anything else is rightly called laughter for it is irrational and has no purpose such as merriment which is unbecoming to the body such as agitated breathing, commotion of one's entire body, facial contortions, bearing of teeth, gums and palate, twisting of neck and the uncontrollable breaking of a strained voice accompanied by short breaths of air. What can this be except madness?

"I said to myself: Come, I will experiment with joy and enjoy pleasure. That, too, turned out to be futile." After I detected that pain and labour were in the essence of wisdom and the accumulation of knowledge, and nothing else except vain and endless struggle, I felt joyful that I would overflow with excess, accrue riches, amass great wealth, and take temporary pleasures before I die. But even in this I saw my vanity, for past pleasures do not help the present, and do not fill up what is empty. It is not just the pleasures of the flesh however, but also spiritual joys that are a temptation for one who possesses them. Hence I desired greatly, because I had been grabbed by this incentive and the angel of Satan too, who had knocked me down with such force that I could not recover. Solomon says about this "Don't give me riches and poverty" [II Cor. 12, 7], and immediately writes underneath "lest I be full and a liar" [Prov. 30, 8.], and lest I should ask, "who is looking at me?" [Prov. 30, 9.], for the devil strikes down in abundance righteous men. In the apostles it is also written, "lest enraptured by his pride, he should fall into the judgement of the devil " [I Tim. 3, 6.], that is 'into such a judgement, as the Devil himself falls ". But having said this, spiritual joy, just as the other kinds, is claimed to be vanity, because we see it through a mirror and in mystery. But when it has been seen for what it is, then it is called vanity for no reason, but rather truth.