What does it mean that the heart is higher than the sky and life is thinner than paper?

The heart is higher than the sky, and life is thinner than paper. It's a proverb, which means that although you have great ambitions, your life is too frivolous-you can't live and die by yourself, you were born poor and unable to display your ambitions, so you are humble to death. From A Dream of Red Mansions.

Another explanation is irony. In order to satirize some whimsical people, they blindly pursue goals that they can't do at all, and they have more than they can chew, so they will eventually fail.

1. This sentence comes from Qingwen's judgment in A Dream of Red Mansions:

"The moon is hard to meet, and the clouds are easy to disperse. My heart is higher than the sky, and I am a humble person. ? Romantic cleverness attracts people's disgust. Long life is full of embarrassment, and the affectionate son is empty. "

Commentary: "Yue Ji" is a bright and cheerful realm. In the old society, people were praised for their noble character and generous mind. ; The new sunny day after the rain is called auspicious, which means "sunny". "Colorful clouds" means beauty; Clouds are colorful and called Wen, which means "Wen". These two sentences mean that people like Qingwen are extremely rare, so it is difficult to be accommodated by a dark and dirty society. Ambition is higher than the sky, but fate is humble and helpless. The romantic and clever temperament makes people jealous, and the early death is framed, which makes Baoyu miss it in vain.

2. Qingwen

Qingwen, a character in China's classic novel A Dream of Red Mansions, is the head of twelve women in Jinling and one of the four beauties in Jia Baoyu's room. Although she is a servant girl, she lives a good girl's life in Baoyu's room. Generally speaking, she has Lin Daiyu's style in Redology.

References:

Qingwen-Baidu Encyclopedia