Peony In Love Quotes
"A girl on the edge of sixteen knows how pretty she is, and as I looked in the mirror I burned with the knowledge."
"My parents adored me and made sure I was educated—highly educated. I lived a rarefied and precious existence."
"Unmarried girls should not be seen in public."
"Hold your tongue at all times. But if you must speak, wait until there is a good moment. Do not offend anyone."
"The emotions that stirred in her were stirred in me every time I read the lines."
"In spring, moved to passion; in autumn, only regret."
"Love, sadness, happiness. Now, watching the story played out before me, imagining what happened in our rockery between the scholar and Liniang, and seeing a young man not of my own family for the first time brought out too many emotions in me."
"Men are not like women. We go into the outer realm where we are seen."
"Do not care about fame. Be modest. In this way you will be found by others to be special."
"He taught me that life imitates art. Through reading, he told me, I could enter worlds different from my own."
"If you'd been a son, you would have made an excellent imperial scholar, perhaps the best our family has ever seen."
"An overeducated daughter is a dead daughter."
"A young lady needs an understanding of letters, so that when she marries she will not be deficient in conversation with her husband."
"I love the weight of books in my hands. I love the smell of the ink and the feel of the rice paper."
"All this reading, where do you think it will end—in nuptial bliss or in disappointment, consumption, and death?"
"The written character for mother love is composed of two elements: love and pain."
"Through our footbinding we have won in two ways. We weak women have beaten the Manchus."
"We can't allow this to happen again. It's unfair to the child and it frightens the younger girls."
"For all my desire to be strong like Liniang, I was softhearted like my aunt."
"This fell under the admonition of never doing anything that would allow the family to lose face."
"I’d finally done something that made my mother truly proud, but it had also made me sick."
"If only my tears of blood could dye red the blossoms of the plum tree."
"My mother-in-law might not let the news of my failure pass beyond the Wu family gates."
"How could I put food in my mouth and swallow it when my stomach was still so unsettled—from the binding, from my secret happiness, and from my worries about being caught tonight?"
"You should spend the rest of the day and evening in bed."
"I felt the heat of his hand through the silk of my sleeve."
"She was a part of my everyday life like the chamber pot."
"Every night after you fall asleep, I lie here on the floor and hide my tears in my handkerchief."
"Those people grew girls on their land instead of crops."
"I was now Tong—a common Same—because of my mother-in-law."
"Three beautiful nights would have to sustain me for a lifetime."
"My poet was right. Three beautiful nights would have to sustain me for a lifetime."
"I may change hands again if I don’t bear a son."
"My grandmother had been out there and now she was worshipped as a martyr."
"Make the man in her life happy, bear him sons, and excel in the Four Virtues."
"My skirts started to hang on my hips instead of my waist."
"Our hearts and minds are tormented, teased, enticed, and delighted by the overwhelming strength of emotions."
"A woman’s greatest strength is to give birth to sons."
"My mother controlled me through her instructions."
"A dream visit to the Peony Pavilion had given Liniang a case of lovesickness."
"A painting is like a shadow without a frame."
"When people are alive, they love. When they die, they keep loving."
"If love ends when a person dies, that is not real love."
"I saw duty and responsibility, nothing more."
"Fate had brought us together. We truly were like two mandarin ducks mated for life."
"Every girl is afraid to marry out, but I didn’t know how bad it was with you."
"Tears gathered in Baba’s eyes. How perfect that father and daughter should be united in their happiness."
"My spirit, if sincere, will stay forever under the moon or by the flowers…"
"What the body knows and what the mind chooses to believe are two different things, after all."
"The living can’t know everything, so I was often bewildered, lost, and unsure as I began my journey."
"The Seven Emotions we talk about on earth—joy, anger, grief, fear, love, hate, and desire—had traveled with me to the afterworld."
"These ancestral emotions, I saw, were more commanding and enduring than any other force in the universe: stronger than life, more persistent than death, more powerful than what the gods can control."
"I missed being able to step into their pages and into another world. But what I missed most was my family."
"Here’s a truth about death: Sometimes you forget things that you once thought were important."
"In your mistress’s brushstrokes, my son finds his wife. In this way, she continues to live."
"Death doesn’t terminate our associations to our families, and the positions we held in life don’t change either."
"The lovesick maidens wanted to know about Ren, and I told them I believed two things: first, Ren and I were a match made in Heaven; second, qing would bring us back together."
"What good would it do me? But my grandmother didn’t often attend to my feelings."
"The opera wasn’t for you," Grandmother said. "It was for Commissioner Tan. Your father was lobbying for his appointment."
"Our reading and writing allowed us to form a world of our own that was very much against what our fathers, husbands, and sons wanted."
"The truth is, I wasn’t at all like what you’ve been told. I wasn’t tolerant of my husband’s concubines. I hated them. And I didn’t commit suicide."
"He hid in the back of the pile of straw. Your father went in next to him. As the wife and mother, I had the honor of lying on top of them. I covered myself as best as I could. The soldiers came in. They were not dumb. They’d been killing for four days already. They used their lances to stab into the pile. They stabbed and stabbed until I died, but I saved my husband and my son, I preserved my chastity, and I learned I was expendable."
"Then I was flying across the sky," she said, a slight smile on her face. "This was a piece of Manchu propaganda that your grandfather was happy to receive."
"They did what was proper," she admitted. "Your grandfather did the right and sensible thing for the entire family, since women have no value. You still don't want to accept this."
"It's just that all those who had real value and honor in our family were women. For too long our daughters have been pushed aside."
"I was alone as no human or spirit should be, unloved and unconnected."
"But truthfully she and her family were just a distraction. They were what I looked at until I couldn't stand it anymore."
"A servant opened the palanquin's door. A perfectly bound foot in a red slipper emerged from the dark interior."
"When pleading and tears didn't work, Ze turned vicious. 'I don't belong to you!' she screamed at her mother-in-law."
"Every marriage encompasses six emotions: love, affection, hatred, bitterness, disappointment, and jealousy."
"All women keep secrets from their husbands," I said. "Men keep secrets from their wives too."
"My husband wants a new kind of wife," Ze said. "He's looking for a companion."
"Your desire for knowledge is as strong as your need to maintain your looks," Ren observed one day.
"As living girls, certain things happen on schedule whether we like them or not."
"We have the freedom to wander, but we’re also driven and called by tradition, instinct, and a desire to survive."
"Ghosts, like living people, do not like to accept the truth. We delude ourselves to save face, maintain a measure of optimism, and keep going forward in truly untenable situations."
"Every morning get up a half hour earlier than your husband," Mama used to say.
"Your husband is Heaven. How could you not serve him?"
"Clouds and rain in a dream is without consequence, demands no responsibility, and should bring no shame."
"A girl who dreams of clouds and rain is preparing herself for the fulfillment of qing."
"They believed the best exemplar of 'womanly speech' was women's writing."
"She reflected on her own life and the moments of love and longing she’d experienced."
"He and Ze sat side by side, looking like the handsome young married couple they were."
"She imagined herself growing old and harboring feelings of loss, pain, and regret."
"Despite his denials—perhaps because of his denials—he gained a solid reputation."
"I should have been proud of my poet’s success."
"You’re my wife," he answered. "Of course I love you."
"She doesn’t want a baby in her womb because she has nothing in her heart."
"They inhaled and exhales words, which floated on the air like willow floss."
"The philosophers tell us to detach from the worldly."
"They didn’t write about butterflies and flowers—those things they could see in their gardens. They wrote about literature, art, politics, and what they saw and did on the outside."
"Marrying and having sons are not a woman’s only way to have dignity."
"All I’m saying is that I also give birth to sons through my writing."
"My love for him had never gone away but only changed, growing deeper like wine fermenting or pickles curing."
"New moons could be grand up there beyond the clouds, but they could also move us to melancholy and remind us of our impermanence."
"My heart is empty and my life has no value anymore. Each moment a thousand tears."
"If she hadn’t been so good at weaving cloth for the gods, she could have lived forever with the Cowherd on earth."
"How could you go back to Baba after he let you save him and after Grandfather used Grandmother to save them both?"
"Think instead of your desires, your knowledge, and what’s in here—your heart."
"Men act on their wills; women act on their feelings. Men initiate and women endure. This is why men visit the outside realm, while women remain inside."