Ihara Saikaku
No longer can a young woman feel at ease; for she is ever concerned with the impression that she may be making on others.Collection: Ease
Ancient simplicity is gone...the people of today are satisfied with nothing but finery.Collection: People
In life it is training rather than birth which counts.Collection: Training
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.Collection: Physicians
To make a fortune some assistance from fate is essential. Ability alone is insufficient.Collection: Fate
If making money is a slow process, losing it is quickly done.Collection: Done
Like ice beneath the sun's rays - to such poverty did he fall...his fortune melted to water.Collection: Fall
If we live by subhuman means we might as well never have had the good fortune to be born human.Collection: Mean
To think twice in every matter and follow the lead of others is no way to make money.Collection: Thinking
Harshness is for the good of a boy, soft-heartedness will ruin him.Collection: Boys
Men take their misfortunes to heart and keep them there.Collection: Heart
The first consideration for all, throughout life, is the earning of a living.Collection: Earning
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.Collection: Taken
Though mothers and fathers give us life, it is money alone which preserves it.Collection: Mother
There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.Collection: Upset
Take care! Kingdoms are destroyed by bandits, houses by rats, and widows by suitors.Collection: House
When you send a clerk on business to a distant province, a man of rigid morals is not your best choice.Collection: Men