7. She begets only evils in them by their various acts (of profligacy), as good milk given to serpents, serves but to increase the poignancy of their poison.
8. Men (by nature) are gentle and kind hearted to friends and strangers, until they are hardheartened by their riches, which like blasts of wind, serve to stiffen (the liquid) frost.
9. As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave, the grateful, the mild and gentle, corrupted by riches.
10. Riches do not conduce to one’s happiness, but redound to his woe and destruction, as the plant aconite when fostered, hides in itself the fatal poison.
11. A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a master wanting partiality, are the three rarities on earth.
12. The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cavern of a dragon, and as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of the Vindhyá mountain inhabited by fierce elephants.
13. Riches like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of men, and like moon-beams brings to bloom the buds of their misery. They blow away the brightness of a fair prospect as a hurricane, and resemble a sea with huge surges (of disquiet).
14. They bring upon us a cloud of fear and error, increase the poison of despondence and regret, and are like the dreadful snakes in the field of our choice.
15. Fortune is (as a killing) frost to the bondsmen of asceticism, and as the night to the owls of libertinism; she is an eclipse to the moonlight of reason, and as moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of folly.
16. She is as transitory as the Iris, and alike pleasant to view by the play of her colours; she is as fickle as the lightening, which vanishes no sooner it appears to sight. Hence none but the ignorant have reliance in her.