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Since life is but a dream,
Why toil to no avail?

處世若大夢，胡爲勞其生？

Original text (Chinese)

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Variants

by Arthur Waley: "Life in the World is but a big dream; I will not spoil it by any labour or care."

More quotes by Li Bai

Flying waters descending straight three thousand feet,
Till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the ninth height of Heaven.

Oh, but it is high and very dangerous!
Such travelling is harder than scaling the blue sky.

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.

Life in the World is but a big dream;
I will not spoil it by any labour or care.

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.

All Li Bai quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Li Bai (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.