Lady Tan's Circle Of Women Quotes
"A thousand years in the past, a thousand years in the future—no matter where you live or how rich or poor you are—the four phases of a woman’s life are the same."
"There is no written character with a man under a roof. Whether animal or woman, we are a man’s possessions. We women exist to give him heirs and feed, clothe, and amuse him. Never forget that."
"I lament that life is like a sunbeam passing through a crack in a wall."
"When we step over this new threshold, you will know only three people—Poppy, your brother, and me. It’s important for women—and girls—to find friendship and steadfastness where they can."
"We are not concerned with veins and arteries, muscles and bones, or organs with specific occupations. We are looking to find how illnesses arise from imbalances in the bodily form of yin and yang."
"Prevention is the most important form of medicine."
"Just as a general knows to use barbarians to attack other barbarians, we can employ the strategy of a woman doctor to heal other women."
"The important thing is to learn from your successes and your failures."
"Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together."
"Hide my feelings, harness time, and when I’m ready I will leap, swim, or fly, and no one will be able to stop me."
"If the body replicates the cosmos and the ear is a reflection of the entire body, then the garden is a container for the universe."
"Your silence is like rain on my worries, feeding and growing them."
"I want us to create a life that parallels all the scenes of marital bliss."
"Life is not just about gowns and jewelry."
"What if a baby is breech or transverse or labor lasts longer than three days? In childbirth, for every woman who lives, ten die."
"Sometimes it’s best to let these things happen on their own."
"Every infant—whether a boy or a girl—is like a bubble floating on water or a wisp of cloud in the sky, easily swept away."
"Nothing is more serious than a capital case, if this indeed turns out to be one. No piece of evidence can be treated lightly."
"Doctors are always male, but men don't understand women."
"Medicine keeps people aligned with the cosmos."
"Rice-and-salt days may not be the longest period in a woman’s life, but they are the most important and most arduous. For a wife and mother, one day can feel like a year."
"Footbinding teaches you to tolerate physical distress and trains you for the rigors of childbirth."
"The husband is heaven. The wife is earth. Heaven is honored, residing in the sky above us, while earth is lowly, dirty, and trod upon."
"In life and in medicine, we always return to harmony and disharmony."
"When was the last time you read Lao Tzu?"
"That you share our tea with your household has given an endorsement of quality to our shop. Kailoo and I are forever grateful."
"I now attend to births in all the best families in Wuxi—"
"Sometimes a husband and wife need help with bedroom affairs."
"None of this would have happened if not for Doctor Wong. A midwife needs male doctors if she’s to fill the rice bowl."
"How can medicine work if she hasn’t been given a proper diagnosis?"
"Though I long to see my husband and every minute apart has been a sword in my heart, I’ll remain in my room. I hope his desires will bring him to me quickly."
"A poor man helps a beggar by the side of the road. The beggar turns out to be a god or an emperor in disguise, and many gifts are bestowed on the poor man for his kindness and generosity when he himself had so little."
"I have confidence in all my grandmother taught me and all who taught her."
"A wide sea lets fish jump; a high sky lets birds fly."
"Distance tests a horse’s strength; time reveals a person’s heart."
"A woman is a woman whether born in the dirt or on silk."
"You are of an age when temptations may come. Don’t allow yourself to become a jade hairpin that falls in the mud."
"Life without a friend is life without sun. Life without a friend is death."
"Every minute of silence you allow to continue will push the two of you farther apart. It takes a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour."
"All the sorrows of the world arise from parting, whether in life or by death."
"I’m proud to have you as my children. Don’t ever forget that."
"I must protect my son… I must find my daughters… Tap, tap, tap."
"Are men not the cause of every woe the world must endure?"
"The truth has a way of revealing itself."
"Justice is always just, even if you think it unfair."
"In our friendship—with all its twists and moments of tumult—was the yin and yang of life."
"There is soft happiness in sadness and deep sadness in happiness."
"An unblemished face will grow wrinkles in time and the white petals of the azalea will turn brown and fall."
"He who depends on himself will have the greatest happiness."
"Sit on the mountaintop and watch the tigers fight. Best not to get scratched."
"We are all trapped to some extent by our physical and emotional selves, but each woman is trapped in a different way."
"Fierce joy attacks yang; fierce anger damages yin."
"Human life is like a sunbeam passing through a crack."
"But who knows, really, how many days might be left for a woman such as myself, and what yet I might do when surrounded by so much beauty and love?"
"It is said that the descendants of a person who saves lives will prosper and thrive, but such did not transpire in this instance."
"Concerns about female reproductive health are probably as old as humankind."
"The term child palace dates to the first or second century C.E. and is still used in contemporary Chinese for the uterus."
"I sat down right then and began to read. On page 19, I came across a mention of Tan Yunxian, a woman doctor in the Ming dynasty..."
"Many believe she achieved the wondrous abilities of the greatest practitioners of the past, who could simply look at a person—could see through a person—to discern what was wrong."
"Tan Yunxian was a remarkable woman by any measure. According to the scholar Charlotte Furth..."
"The Washing Away of Wrongs continued to be used by forensic scientists in China well into the twentieth century."
"When I wanted inspiration for a particular outfit, I looked at images in Chinese Dress by Valery Garrett, Chinese Clothing by Hua Mei, and Traditional Chinese Clothing by Shaorong Yang..."
"I looked at the front material and saw that I’d had the book on my shelf for a decade and had never opened it."