Cao Xueqin 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.

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.

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.

太虚幻境”。两边又有一副对联，道是：“假作真时真亦假，无为有处有还无。

诗云：一局输赢料不真，香销茶尽尚逡巡。欲知目下兴衰兆，须问旁观冷眼人。

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

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

Any doctor will do in an emergency.

一身之病。泪光点点，娇喘微微。闲静时如姣花照

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

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

Can I, that these flowers’ obsequies attend, Divine how soon or late my life will end? Let others laugh flower-burial to see: Another year who will be burying me? As petals drop and spring begins to fail, The bloom of youth, too, sickens and turns pale. One day, when spring has gone and youth has fled. The Maiden and the flowers will both be dead.

Undoubtedly, the place to start with Chinese fiction is with Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth-century classic, A Dream of Red Mansions, a sweeping epic about family life and Confucian practices in feudal China, including numerous subplots, a gazillion characters, and a touching love story.

If with the water’s rosy hue comparison be made, Carmine tears and dewy flowers seem of the self-same shade. Yet lady’s tears and flowers in this unalike I find, That the flowers are still and smiling, but the tears flow unallayed. As she gazes on the smiling flowers, her tears at last grow dry; But as they dry, the springtime ends and the flowers fade. The flowers fade, and an equal blight the lady’s fair cheek palls. The petals drift; she is weary; and soon the darkness falls. A nightingale is singing a dirge for the death of spring, And moonlight steals through the casement and dapples the silent walls.

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.

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

满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪。都云作者痴，谁解其中味。

when they quietly dispersed, leaving only the four waiting maids: Xiren, Meiren, Qingwen, and Sheyue to keep him company.

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’.

无材可去补苍天，枉入红尘若许年。

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”.

Now as I bury the flowers, others laugh at my folly; But in that future year, who knows who will bury me?

After long cold the trees strange frost-fruits bear

莫失莫忘，仙寿恒昌。不离不弃，芳龄永继。

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.

I would do anything – absolutely anything,’ he was thinking, ‘if only you would be nice to me. If you would be nice to me, I would gladly die for you this moment. It doesn’t really matter whether you know what I feel for you or not. Just be nice to me, then at least we shall be a little closer to each other, instead of so horribly far apart.’ At the same time Dai-yu was thinking: ‘Never mind me. Just be your own natural self. If you were all right, I should be all right too. All these manoeuvrings to try and anticipate my feelings don’t bring us any closer together; they merely draw us farther apart.’ The percipient reader will no doubt observe that these two young people were already of one mind, but that the complicated procedures by which they sought to draw together were in fact having precisely the opposite effect. Complacent reader! Permit us to remind you that your correct understanding of the situation is due solely to the fact that we have been revealing to you the secret, innermost thoughts of those two young persons, which neither of them had so far ever felt able to express.

No es que esté arrepentida de nada, simplemente, si hubiera sabido cómo terminarían las cosas habría actuado de otra manera; pero cometí la necedad de pensar que siempre estaríamos juntos

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.

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.

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.

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.

... je t'emmènerais dans une contrée resplendissante et prospère, au foyer d'une famille aristocratique des lettrés, fastueux domaine où abondent les fleurs et les saules, terroir de la douceur, de richesse et d'honneurs, pour t'installer dans la joie et en toute sécurité. Cao Xueqin, "Le Rêve dans le pavillon rouge", trad, fr. par Li Tche-Houa, J. Alézaïs, révision par A. D'Hormon, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", 1981, vol. 1, p. 8.

No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand.

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.

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.

Not chewed-off ends of the sky’s embroidery? ‘What are they?’ – ‘Raise the blind a bit and see.’ ‘A white hand snatches some and draws it in, Pursued by the swallows’ chiding din. Oh stay, oh stay! The lovely spring drifts after you away.

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.

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;

She walked indoors, and staring once more at her orchids, thought to herself: ‘Flowers have their spring-time, a time for fresh blossoms and young leaves. I am young, but frail as the willow that dreads the first breath of autumn… If all turns out for the best, I may grow stronger yet. But if not, my fate will be like that of the fallen petals at spring’s end, driven by the rain and tossed in the wind…

Questioning the Chrysanthemums by River Queen Since none else autumn’s mystery can explain, I come with murmured questions to your gate: Who, world-disdainer, shares your hiding-place? Of all the flowers why do yours bloom so late? The garden silent lies in frosty dew; The geese return; the cricket mourns his fate. Let not speech from your silent world be banned: Converse with me, since me you understand!

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

This charming custom of ‘speeding the fairies’ is a special favourite with the fair sex, and in Prospect Garden all the girls were up betimes on this day making little coaches and palanquins out of willow-twigs and flowers and little banners and pennants from scraps of brocade and any other pretty material they could find, which they fastened with threads of coloured silk to the tops of flowering trees and shrubs. Soon every plant and tree was decorated and the whole garden had become a shimmering sea of nodding blossoms and fluttering coloured streamers. Moving about in the midst of it all, the girls in their brilliant summer dresses, beside which the most vivid hues of plant and plumage became faint with envy, added the final touch of brightness to a scene of indescribable gaiety and colour.

True learning implies a clear insight into human activities. Genuine culture involves the skilful manipulation of human relationships.

There was a peal of laughter from the girls. Then, before anyone could say a word, the line was seen to move a fraction. A bite at last! The sage yanked in for all he was worth. The rod crashed into a protruding rock and broke clean in two.

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.

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;

Though he was a newcomer and had arrived only a short while before the crisis, he proved to be a most industrious and loyal servant, and was appalled by the way the other servants were taking advantage of their masters. He had insufficient status among the domestic staff to dare voice his feelings to the offenders, and could only eat his evening meal and take his indignation to bed.

Please, my dear! It isn’t that I find your feet in the least distasteful. It’s just that I drank rather a lot of yellow wine last night and ate lots of very rich mooncakes, so today I am feeling a little queasy.

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.

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.

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.

Even in a palace hall, Law is the lord of all.

There was a peal of laughter from the girls. Then, before anyone could say a word, the line was seen to move a fraction. A bite at last! The sage yanked in for all he was worth. The rod crashed into a protruding rock and broke clean in two. The

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

Snowgoose exclaimed: ‘Thank goodness she’s better anyway! We must never mention it again! Even if Bao-yu were to marry another lady and I witnessed the wedding with my own eyes, I swear I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone.

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.

Danas sahranjujem cvijeće! Smiju se: ona je luda. A sama jednom kad umrem, O tko će mi inijeti lijes?

O crvenoj sobi jučer sam sanjao snove, A danas nad vodom tamne pjesme mi zvone. Nad pjenom mora otoci oblaka plove, A magle s brijega u šume i šipražja rone. Pod mjesecom vječnim nema prolazne mjere I samo je oseka, plima vječne duševne mijene. U detinjstva dane - zar može ponestati vjere, U rijeku Han i južne mostove njene?

光阴迅速，历夏经秋，见了些寒蝉鸣败柳，大火[1]向西流。

Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls. . . As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings. To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well have not existed.

Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls. . . As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings. To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well have not existed.

绕堤柳借三篙翠，隔岸花分一脉香。”贾

What is truth, and what fiction? You must understand that truth is fiction, and fiction truth.

There are always any number of worthless philanderers to protest that it is woman's beauty alone that inspires them, or loving feelings alone, unsullied by any taint of lust. They lie in their teeth! To be moved by woman's beauty is itself a kind of lust. To experience loving feelings is, even more assuredly, a kind of lust. Every act of love, every carnal congress of the sexes is brought about precisely because sensual delight in beauty has kindled the feeling of love.

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.

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.

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.

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.

In the courtyard before them grew a clump of bright green bamboo, while by the main doorway stood a row of dark pine-trees.

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

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

The immortal parts of the late Droopy’s relict leaped through her cranium and described several somersaults in the air. She

贾母道：“老亲家，你今年多大年纪了？”刘姥姥忙立身答道：“我今年七十五了。”贾母向众人道：“这么大年纪了，还这么健朗。比我大好几岁呢。我要到这么大年纪，还不知怎么动不得呢。”刘姥姥笑道：“我们生来是受苦的人，老太太生来是享福的。若我们也这样，那些庄家活也没人作了。”贾母道：“眼睛牙齿都还好？”刘姥姥道：“都还好，就是今年左边的槽牙活动了。”贾母道：“我老了，都不中用了，眼也花，耳也聋，记性也没了。你们这些老亲戚，我都不记得了。亲戚们来了，我怕人笑我，我都不会，不过嚼的动的吃两口，睡一觉，闷了时和这些孙子孙女儿顽笑一回就完了。”刘姥姥笑道：“这正是老太太的福了。我们想这么着也不能。”贾母道：“什么福，不过是个老废物罢了。”说的大家都笑了。

The melons looked all right, but there’s not much inside them when you cut them open.’ ‘Those mooncakes are good, aren’t they?’ said Cousin Zhen. ‘They were made by our new pastry-cook. I tried them myself to make sure they were all right before venturing to send you any. As for the melons: we’ve been lucky in previous years, but for some reason none of them this year seem to be any good.’ ‘I think we must blame the weather,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘The rains this year were excessive.

but he was not averse to gentler pastimes: he frequented the budding groves and could play on both the flute and the zither.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Originally in a sermon of John Donne. Borrowed by Ernest Hemmingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls , and more recently by Cao Xueqin, Victor Ying and in Red Tower Dream: Vol. 8

No es que esté arrepentida de nada; simplemente, si hubiera sabido cómo terminarían las cosas habría actuado de otra manera; pero cometí la necedad de pensar que siempre estaríamos juntos.

Tenía el ceño elevado, pero a la vez no fruncido; sus elocuentes ojos mostraban alegría y dolor al mismo tiempo; su delicada fragilidad le daba un aire singular. Sus ojos brillaban de lágrimas, su aliento era leve y suave. En reposo parecía una flor adorable reflejada en un estanque; al moverse semejaba un flexible sauce meciéndose al viento. Se la veía más inteligente que Bi Gan, más delicada que Xi Shi.

Él me dio dulce rocío —dijo Perla Bermeja—, pero yo no tengo agua para compensar su bondad. Si baja al mundo de los hombres me gustaría acompañarlo; así podré saldar mi deuda derramando por él las lágrimas de toda una vida.

Él me dio dulce rocío —dijo Perla Bermeja—, pero yo no tengo agua para compensar su bondad. Si baja al mundo de los hombres me gustaría acompañarlo; así podré saldar mi deuda derramando por él las lágrimas de toda una vida.

Tenía el ceño elevado, pero a la vez no fruncido; sus elocuentes ojos mostraban alegría y dolor al mismo tiempo; su delicada fragilidad le daba un aire singular. Sus ojos brillaban de lágrimas, su aliento era leve y suave. En reposo parecía una flor adorable reflejada en un estanque; al moverse semejaba un flexible sauce meciéndose al viento. Se la veía más inteligente que Bi Gan, más delicada que Xi Shi.

Tenía el ceño elevado, pero a la vez no fruncido; sus elocuentes ojos mostraban alegría y dolor al mismo tiempo; su delicada fragilidad le daba un aire singular. Sus ojos brillaban de lágrimas, su aliento era leve y suave. En reposo parecía una flor adorable reflejada en un estanque; al moverse semejaba un flexible sauce meciéndose al viento. Se la veía más inteligente que Bi Gan, más delicada que Xi Shi.

The discovery that he was a keen amateur actor – one, moreover, who specialized in romantic roles – had led Xue Pan to jump to the wrong conclusion and assume that he must share the same ‘wind and moonlight’ proclivities as himself.

The story you’ve just been listening to is called Falsehood Exposed, or The Tale of a Grandmother. It is a story which took place under the reigning dynasty, on this very day of this very month of this very year on this very spot and at this very hour. How can Grannie “with one mouth tell a double tale”? Ah, how indeed! Our tale puts forth two tails. Which tail to wag? Wig-wag. But for the time being we do not inquire which tale is false, which true. Our story turns rather to those people in the party who were admiring the lanterns and watching the play… Just give these two kinsfolk a chance to drink a cup of wine and watch a scene or two more of the play, Grannie, and then you can get on with your Exposure of Falsehood – dynasty by dynasty.

A wintry sunset gilds the vine-wreathed door Where stands, mossed by old rains, the flower pot. Its snowy blooms, as snow impermanent, Are as pure as pure white jade that alters not. O fragrant frailty, that so fears the wind! Most radiant whiteness! Full moon without spot! White flower-sprite, shake your silken wings! Away! And join with me to the hymn the dying day!

A place remote, where footsteps seldom pass, And dew glistens on the untrodden grass.

Going indoors she sat down by the moon-window to take her medicine. Light reflected from the bamboos outside passed through the gauze of the window to make a green gloom within, lending a cold aquarian look to the floor and the surfaces of the furniture.

Once outside the courtyard gate, the Garden stretched out on every hand in uniform whiteness, uninterrupted except for the dark green of a pine tree or the lighter green of some bamboos here and there in the distance. He felt as if he was standing in the middle of a great glittering crystal bowl.

On the stone tower a stork unwatchful sleeps - On the warm mat a cat contented sighs. In moonlit caves, the silvery water laps - And red flags flutter against sunset skies.

Like spendthrift youths in spring's new fashions dressed, Its bare thin branches burst in glorious flower. Snow no more falls, but a bright rosy cloud Tints hills and streams in one long sunset hour. Through this red flood my dream-boat makes its way, While flutes sound chill from many a maiden's bower. Sure from no earthly stock this beauty came, But trees immortal round the Fairy Tower.

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.

To each his fate in love, I suppose.

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.

It’s from the Tang poet Qian Xu’s poem “Furled Plantains”: Green waxen candles from which no flames rise.

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.

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.

caused her to be especially tender towards him; she was quite deliberately trying to ‘graft herself’ on to the ‘stem’ of his affections, drawing him closer to her and usurping Dai-yu’s place

Come here,’ said Grandmother Jia with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Come and have a look at something.’ Bao-yu walked over to the couch where she was lying, and Grandmother Jia handed him the jade thumb-ring. He took it in his hands and inspected it. It was about three inches in circumference, slightly elliptical in shape like an elongated melon, of a reddish hue. It was a very beautiful piece of workmanship. Bao-yu was most taken with it and enthused at some length.

should be engraved on stone in the Prospect Garden itself – a lasting memorial to the precocious talent of her gifted family.

I’ve already told them to light the stove there and get the underground heating system started.