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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.

— Ihara Saikaku The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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More quotes by Ihara Saikaku

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

The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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

The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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

The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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

The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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

The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ihara Saikaku (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.