Li Bai Quotes

Li Bai offers lyrical musings on clouds, mountains and loneliness that whisk readers into serene, dreamy landscapes.

16 quotes

1. Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower; Her balcony, glimmering with the bright spring dew, Is either the tip of earth's Jade Mountain, Or a moon-edged roof of paradise

2. 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.

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

4. 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.

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

6. 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.

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

8. 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.

9. Shade and light are different in every valley.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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!

15. 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.

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