Quotes from Ihara Saikaku

Men take their misfortunes to heart and keep them there.

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

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.

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

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

In life it is training rather than birth which counts.

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