Li Bai Quotes

The world is like a great empty dream. Why should one toil away one's life?

Heaven is high, Earth Wide. Bitter between them flies my sorrow.

Shade and light are different in every valley.

All the birds have flown up and gone; A lonely cloud floats leisurely by. We never tire of looking at each other - Only the mountain and I.

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,We drained a hundred jugs of wine.A splendid night it was . . . .In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,But at last drunkenness overtook us;And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet

You ask why I make my home n the mountain forest, and I smile, and am silent, and even my soul remains quiet: it lives in the other world which no one owns. The peach trees blossom, The water flows.

I bow in reverence to the white cloud.

To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring.

I am asked why I live in the green mountains; I smile but reply not, for my heart is at rest. The flowing waters carry the image of the peach blossoms far, far away; there is an earth, there is a heaven, unknown to men.

Now let you and me buy wine today! Why say we have not the price? My horse spotted with five flowers, My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold, These I will take out, and call my boy To barter them for sweet wine. And with you twain, let me forget The sorrow of ten thousand ages!

Forever and forever and forever

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

The living is a passing traveler; The dead, a man come home.

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men.

Gently I stir a white feather fan, With open shirt sitting in a green wood. I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone; A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head.

Bears, dragons, tempestuous on mountain and river, Startle the forest and make the heights tremble. Clouds darken beneath the darkness of rain, streams pale with a pallor of mist. The gods of Thunder and Lightning Shatter the whole range.

Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine, No friends at hand, so I poured alone; I raised my cup to invite the moon, Turned to my shadow, and we became three.

The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

In a universe animated by the interaction of yin (female) and yang (male) energies, the moon was literally yin visible. Indeed, it was the very germ or source of yin, and the sun was its yang counterpart.

The autumn air is clear, The autumn moon is bright. Fallen leaves gather and scatter, The jackdaw perches and starts anew. We think of each other- when will we meet? This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.

Since Life is but a Dream, Why toil to no avail?

Growing older, I love only quietness: who need be concerned with the things of this world? Looking back, what better plan than this: returning to the grove.

From the walls of Baidi high in the coloured dawn To Jiangling by night-fall is three hundred miles, Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.

From some home a jade flute sends dark notes drifting, Scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang. Tonight, if we should hear the willow-breaking song, Who could help but long for the gardens of home?

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die; The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven, While ravens and kites peck at human entrails, Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.