Union in privacy (with one’s wife); boldness; storing away useful items; watchfulness; and not easily trusting others; these five things are to be learned from a crow.
Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.
If one limb of the body is defected or inflicted with, disease, the whole feels that pain. Some way if any department, minister or official of the state is faulty, the whole country is effected. An administrator should try hard to curb it.
He who wears unclean garments, has dirty teeth, is a glutton, speaks unkindly and sleeps after sunrise – although he may be the greatest personality – will lose the favour of Lakshmi.
A still-born son is superior to a foolish son endowed with a long life. The first causes grief for but a moment while the latter like a blazing fire consumes his parents in grief for life.
What vice could be worse than covetousness? What is more sinful than slander? For one who is truthful, what need is there for austerity? For one who has a clean heart, what is the need for pilgrimage?
One who is in search of knowledge should give up the search of pleasure and the one who is in search of pleasure should give up the search of knowledge.
A wise man should marry a virgin of a respectable family even if she is deformed. He should not marry one of a low-class family, through beauty. Marriage in a family of equal status is preferable.
Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, comes of Her own accord where fools are not respected, grain is well stored up, and the husband and wife do not quarrel.
He who look at a woman who is not his wife as a mother; wealth that is not his as dust and all the men as himself… is a happy man. He, who sees all these things under a different light, is a blind.
