Ecclesiastes 1:8
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The preacher who wrote this was Solomon in his last days, about 977, after he had tasted all the pleasures the world could give and yielded to the desires of heart and flesh, seeking pleasure in luxury and power and feasting and wine and women, until his many wives turned his heart away. That all things are full of labour beyond human utterance means human experience is crowded with activity and wonders too great to express, and that life is marked by exhausting toil whose burden human effort cannot fully tell. The unsatisfied eye and unfilled ear mean that seeing and hearing never bring lasting satisfaction, so no amount of what is seen or heard fills human desire, even amid abounding knowledge and a continual panorama of inventions. After human transgression the world entered a state of sorrow and vanity.
What Solomon in his wisdom sought but did not find shows that following every luxury the human mind can invent produces nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit, and that all wisdom and glory and wealth and popularity cannot bring rest of soul, exposing the folly of earthly pursuits without hope in God and the nothingness of humanity without God. The verse expresses hearty repentance learned by actual experience and leads to the conclusion that the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep His commandments. It also points to life's recurring patterns and human transience, in that successive generations live through the same kinds of repeated sights and familiar stories as their fathers and then pass away. This dissatisfaction shows the futility of being absorbed in earthly pursuits and is a reason to give oneself with love and labor to Jesus, rather than treating stewardship as only a question of how much to give.