Cao Xueqin Quotes (1715-1764)

“If anyone is in a hurry to read my novel, all he's got to do is keep me daily supplied with roast duck and good Shaoxing wine, and I'll be happy to oblige him.”

“一朝春尽红颜老，花落人亡两不知！
• One day, when spring has gone and youth has fled,
The Maiden and the flowers will both be dead.”

“一个是水中月，一个是镜中花。
• All, insubstantial, doomed to pass,
As moonlight mirrored in the water
Or flowers reflected in a glass.”

“开辟鸿蒙，谁为情种？都只为风月情浓。
• When first the world from chaos rose,
Tell me, how did love begin?
The wind and moonlight first did love compose.”

“满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪！
都云作者痴，谁解其中味？
• Man zhi huangtang yan, yi ba xinsuan lei!
Dou yun zuozhe chi, shei jie qizhong wei?”

“女兒是水作的骨肉，男人是泥作的骨肉。我見了女兒，我便清爽；見了男子，便覺濁臭逼人。
• Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I am with girls I feel fresh and clean, but when I am with boys I feel stupid and nasty.”

“今风尘碌碌，一事无成。忽念及当日所有之女子，一一细考较去，觉其行止见识，皆出于我之上。何我堂堂之须眉，诚不若彼裙钗哉？实愧则有余，悔又无益之大无可如何之日也！当此，则自欲将已往所赖天恩祖德，锦衣纨绔之时，饫甘餍肥之日，背父兄教育之恩，负师友规谈之德，以至今日一技无成，半生潦倒之罪，编述一集，以告天下人：我之罪固不免，然闺阁中本自历历有人，万不可因我之不肖，自护己短，一并使其泯灭也。
• 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 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. The realization brought with it an overpowering sense of shame and remorse, and for a while I was plunged in the deepest despair. There and then I resolved to make a record of all the recollections of those days I could muster – those golden days when I dressed in silk and ate delicately, when we still nestled in the protecting shadow of the Ancestors and Heaven still smiled on us. I resolved to tell the world how, in defiance of all my family's attempts to bring me up properly and all the warnings and advice of my friends, I had brought myself to this present wretched state, in which, having frittered away half a lifetime, I find myself without a single skill with which I could earn a decent living. I resolved that, however unsightly my own shortcomings might be, I must not, for the sake of keeping them hid, allow those wonderful girls to pass into oblivion without a memorial.”