Ihara Saikaku Quotes

For each of the four hundred and four bodily ailments celebrated physicians have produced infallible remedies, but the malady which brings the greatest distress to mankind - to even the wisest and cleverest of us - is the plague of poverty.

In life it is training rather than birth which counts.

Like ice beneath the sun's rays - to such poverty did he fall...his fortune melted to water.

Ancient simplicity is gone...the people of today are satisfied with nothing but finery.

No longer can a young woman feel at ease; for she is ever concerned with the impression that she may be making on others.

To make a fortune some assistance from fate is essential. Ability alone is insufficient.

The first consideration for all, throughout life, is the earning of a living.

Take care! Kingdoms are destroyed by bandits, houses by rats, and widows by suitors.

If we live by subhuman means we might as well never have had the good fortune to be born human.

If making money is a slow process, losing it is quickly done.

To think twice in every matter and follow the lead of others is no way to make money.

Harshness is for the good of a boy, soft-heartedness will ruin him.

Men take their misfortunes to heart and keep them there.

Though mothers and fathers give us life, it is money alone which preserves it.

And why do so many people wilfully exhaust their strength in promiscuous living, when their wives are on hand from bridal night till old age - to be taken when required, like fish from a private pond.

There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.

When you send a clerk on business to a distant province, a man of rigid morals is not your best choice.