The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1 Quotes

“The cunning waste their pains;
The wise men vex their brains;
But the simpleton, who seeks no gains,
With belly full, he wanders free
As drifting boat upon the sea.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man’s wives and daughters so that they are packed with sex and violence. Even worse are those writers of the breeze-and-moonlight school, who corrupt the young with pornography and filth. As for books of the beauty-and-talented-scholar type, a thousand are written to a single pattern and none escapes bordering on indecency. They are filled with allusions to handsome, talented young men and beautiful, refined girls in history; but in order to insert a couple of his own love poems, the author invents stereotyped heroes and heroines with the inevitable low character to make trouble between them like a clown in a play, and makes even the slave girls talk pedantic nonsense. So all these novels are full of contradictions and absurdly unnatural.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“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 Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“gleaming like some fairy princess with sparkling jewels and gay embroideries. Her chignon was enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls. It was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains. Her necklet was of red gold in the form of a coiling dragon. Her dress had a fitted bodice and was made of dark red silk damask with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in raised gold thread. Her jacket was lined with ermine. It was of a slate-blue stuff with woven insets in coloured silks. Her under-skirt was of a turquoise-coloured imported silk crêpe embroidered with flowers.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“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, The Golden Days

“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, The Golden Days

“gleaming like some fairy princess with sparkling jewels and gay embroideries. Her chignon was enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls. It was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains. Her necklet was of red gold in the form of a coiling dragon. Her dress had a fitted bodice and was made of dark red silk damask with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in raised gold thread. Her jacket was lined with ermine. It was of a slate-blue stuff with woven insets in coloured silks. Her under-skirt was of a turquoise-coloured imported silk crêpe embroidered with flowers. She”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“One of his pages who had some experience of country matters was able to name each implement for him and explain its functions. Bao-yu was impressed. ‘Now I can understand the words of the old poet,’ he said: ‘Each grain of rice we ever ate Cost someone else a drop of sweat.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“the singers showed signs of embarking on another one. Disenchantment observed with a sigh that Bao-yu was dreadfully bored.”
― Cáo Xuěqín, The Golden Days

“should be engraved on stone in the Prospect Garden itself – a lasting memorial to the precocious talent of her gifted family.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“Let others all Commend the marriage rites of gold and jade; I still recall The bond of old by stone and flower made; And while my vacant eyes behold Crystalline shows of beauty pure and cold, From my mind can not be banished That fairy wood forlorn that from the world has vanished. How true I find That every good some imperfection holds! Even a wife so courteous and so kind No comfort brings to my afflicted mind.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“Even in a palace hall, Law is the lord of all.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“Having opened up a way for the imprisoned souls, the chief celebrant had succeeded by means of spells and incantations in breaking open the gates of hell. He had shone his light (a little hand mirror) for the souls in darkness. He had confronted Yama, the Judge of the Dead. He had seized the demon torturers who resisted his progress. He had invoked Ksitigarbha, the Saviour King, to aid him. He had raised up a golden bridge, and now, by means of a litle flag which he held aloft in one hand, was conducting over it those souls from the very deepest pit of hell who still remined undelivered.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“Whereas in this favoured Country, situate in the centremost part of the four continents of the earth, on which it has pleased Heaven to bestow the blessings of everlasting prosperity and peace, we... have, with all due reverence and care, prepared offcies for the salvation of all departed souls, supplicating Heaven and calling upon the Name of the Lord Buddha...Now, earnestly praying and beseeching the Eighteen Guardians of the Sangha, The Warlike Guardians of the Law, and the Twelve Guardians of the Months mercifully to extend their holy compassion towards us, but terribly to blaze forth in divine majesty against the powers of evil, we do solemnly perform for nine and forty days the Great Mass for the purification, deliverance and salvation of all souls on land and on sea.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“Our house has now enjoyed nearly a century of dazzling success. Suppose one day "joy at its height engenders sorrow". And suppose that, in the words of another proverb, "when the tree falls, the monkeys scatter". Will not our reputation as one of the great, cultured households of the age then turn into a hollow mockery?"...Honour and disgrace follow each other in an unending cycle. No human power can arrest that cycle and hold it permanently in one position. What you can do, however, is to plan while we are still prosperous for the kind of heritage that will stand up to the hard times when they come.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

“It’s from the Tang poet Qian Xu’s poem “Furled Plantains”: Green waxen candles from which no flames rise.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“As for the ‘settling of accounts’ that Bao-yu had proposed to Qin Zhong, we have been unable to ascertain exactly what form this took; and as we would not for the world be guilty of a fabrication, we must allow the matter to remain a mystery.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“But most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the banks of the Magic River. There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful Crimson Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to watering her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of life.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“True learning implies a clear insight into human activities. Genuine culture involves the skilful manipulation of human relationships.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“As for the ‘settling of accounts’ that Bao-yu had proposed to Qin Zhong, we have been unable to ascertain exactly what form this took; and as we would not for the world be guilty of a fabrication, we must allow the matter to remain a mystery. Next”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“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. What”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“Soft-hearted with his boy friends, maybe,’ said Xi-feng with a lubricious smile; ‘but when he has to do with us women he is hard enough.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“What is truth, and what fiction? You must understand that truth is fiction, and fiction truth.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: The Dreamer Wakes

“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Golden Days

“Presently Grandmother Jia appeared, seated, in solitary splendour, in a large palanquin carried by eight bearers. Li Wan, Xi-feng and Aunt Xue followed, each in a palanquin with four bearers. After them came Bao-chai and Dai-yu sharing a carriage with a splendid turquoise-coloured canopy trimmed with pearls. The carriage after them, in which Ying-chun, Tan-chun and Xi-chun sat, had vermilion-painted wheels and was shaded with a large embroidered umbrella. After them rode Grandmother Jia’s maids, Faithful, Parrot, Amber and Pearl; after them Lin Dai-yu’s maids, Nightingale, Snowgoose and Delicate; then Bao-chai’s maids, Oriole and Apricot; then Ying-chun’s maids, Chess and Tangerine; then Tan-chun’s maids, Scribe and Ebony; then Xi-chun’s maids, Picture and Landscape; then Aunt Xue’s maids, Providence and Prosper, sharing a carriage with Caltrop and Caltrop’s own maid, Advent; then Li Wan’s maids, Candida and Casta; then Xi-feng’s own maids, Patience, Felicity and Crimson, with two of Lady Wang’s maids, Golden and Suncloud, whom Xi-feng had agreed to take with her, in the carriage behind. In the carriage after them sat another couple of maids and a nurse holding Xi-feng’s little girl. Yet more carriages followed carrying the nannies and old women from the various apartments and the women whose duty it was to act as duennas when the ladies of the household went out of doors.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Crab-Flower Club

“As he turned, he happened to catch sight of Dai-yu, who was sitting behind Bao-chai, smiling mockingly and stroking her cheek with her finger – which in sign-language means, ‘You are a great big liar and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
― Cao Xueqin, The Crab-Flower Club