Zhang Chao (張潮)

Reciting their poems and reading their books is not the only way to make friends with the ancients; looking at their calligraphy and painting is also a way of befriending them.

Literary fame can stand in for success in the civil-service examinations; frugal virtue for wealth; serene leisure for long years.

Love wine, but do not rail at the company; love beauty, but do not harm your health; love money, but do not blind your conscience; love spirit, but do not overstep reason.

The ancients said, “Poetry must wait for hardship before it becomes fine.” For hardship fills one’s words with deep feeling, and so it is easy to excel. A man of wealth and rank, having no poverty to lament and no lowliness to bewail, talks of nothing but wind, clouds, moon, and dew—how could his poems be good? If he wants to change this, his only course is to travel. The mountains and rivers, local customs, products, and human conditions he sees—whether amid the wounds left by fire and war, or after drought, flood, and calamity—every one of them can be put into poems. Borrowing the distress of others to supply his own songs of lament, he will find that poetry need not wait for hardship to become fine.

A mirror cannot reflect itself, a scale cannot weigh itself, a sword cannot strike itself.

The word ‘shame’ is what governs the gentleman; the word ‘pain’ is what governs the petty man.

When black meets white, black can stain the white, but white cannot cover the black; when fragrance mixes with stench, stench can overpower the fragrance, but fragrance cannot match the stench. This is how the struggle between gentlemen and petty men generally goes.

Foul rot transformed into something wondrous: soy paste, fermented bean curd, and ‘golden juice.’ As for the wondrous transformed into foul rot, that is true of all things.

The ancients said that even birds and beasts know the human bonds. I say it is not only birds and beasts—even plants and trees have them. The peony as king and the herbaceous peony as minister: that is ruler and subject. The tall tree of the southern hill and the catalpa of the northern hill: that is father and son. The redbud that withered on hearing it would be divided and revived on hearing it would not: that is brothers. The twin-blossomed lotus: that is husband and wife. The orchid of one heart: that is friends.

In forming character, one should start from the moral learning of the Song scholars; in dealing with the world, one should blend in the free spirit of the Jin.