Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining them and comparing them in my mind’s eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls – which is all they were then – were in every way, both morally and intellectually, superior to the ‘grave and mustachioed signior’ I am now supposed to have become.

— Cao Xueqin

Cao Xueqin Quotes

When grief for fiction’s idle words More real than human life appears, Reflect that life itself’s a dream And do not mock the reader’s tears.

— Cao Xueqin

No remedy but love Can make the lovesick well; Only the hand that tied the knot Can loose the tiger’s bell.

— Cao Xueqin

Better by far the destiny of plant or stone, bereft of knowledge and consciousness, but blessed at least with purity and peace of mind!

— Cao Xueqin

On perusal of these two sentences, albeit the room was sumptuous and beautifully laid out, he would on no account remain in it. “Let us go at once,” he hastened to observe, “let us go at once.

— Cao Xueqin

A chorus of Golden Pages and Jade Maidens came onto the stage, fairy streamers fluttering and flags aloft, to reveal in their midst a gorgeously attired lady, her head draped in black, her costume shimmering with.

— Cao Xueqin

Next on the programme was ‘A wife Eats Husks’, from ‘The Story of the Lute’, followed by ‘Bodhidharma and his Disciple Crossing the River’, from ‘The Pilgrim’s Path’.

— Cao Xueqin

Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining them and comparing them in my mind’s eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls – which is all they were then – were in every way, both morally and intellectually, superior to the ‘grave and mustachioed signior’ I am now supposed to have become.

— Cao Xueqin

The mighty sturgeon has his pool; The stork upon the dam makes his habitation. Fish in scaly armour, Birds in serried plumes, find protection. In my distress I question that inscrutable expanse: O bowels of earth! O boundless sky! Will ye not hearken to my cry? Above, the twinkling Milky Way; The air cold, Slanting moonlight, The water-clock sunk past midnight. My restless heart grieves still;.

— Cao Xueqin

To hold the garden’s fragrance in one vase, And see all autumn in a single spray?

— Cao Xueqin

My only wish is that men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business worries or a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental refreshment but even perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon their vain and frivolous pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration of their vital forces.

— Cao Xueqin

Yin-yang is a sort of force,’ said Xiang-yun. ‘It’s the force in things that gives them their distinctive forms. For example, the sky is Yang and the earth is Yin; water is Yin and fire is Yang; the sun is Yang and the moon is Yin.

— Cao Xueqin

Pages full of idle words Penned with hot and bitter tears: All men call the author fool; None his secret message hears. The origin of The Story of the Stone has now been made clear.

— Cao Xueqin

I am no “jewel in the casket” biding “till one should come to buy”, no “jade-pin in the drawer hid, waiting its time to fly”.

— Cao Xueqin

A bottle-gourd is ample for my needs,’ replied the Taoist. ‘Why build my hut on some famous mountain? As for this temple, only a crumbling tablet of stone remains to point to its long-forgotten origins.

— Cao Xueqin

After long cold the trees strange frost-fruits bear.

— Cao Xueqin

Perhaps my fellow humans whom the dream of life has ensnared may find in this tale an echo, may be summoned back by it to their true home; while free spirits of the high hills may find in the record of Brother Stone’s transformations, as in that older tale of the Migration of the Magic Mountain, a reflected light to quicken their own aspirations.

— Cao Xueqin
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