1. For they have said, reasoning with themselves incorrectly: "Our lifetime is brief and tedious, and there is no relief within the limits of man, and no one is acknowledged to have returned from the dead.
2. For we are born from nothing, and after this we will be as if we had not been, because the breath in our nostrils is like smoke, and conversation sends out sparks from the stirring of our heart;
3. therefore, when it is extinguished, our body will be ashes, and our spirit will be diffused like a soft breeze, and our life will pass away like the wisp of a cloud, just as a mist is dissolved when it is driven away by the rays of the sun and overpowered by its heat.
4. And in time our name will surrender to oblivion, and no one will have remembrance of our works.