Q0288

Zhuangzi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly…He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly was dreaming it was Zhou.
Thinker Zhuangzi
School Daoism
Source Zhuangzi, Qiwulun
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Zhuangzi, Qiwulun, within the tradition of Daoism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Zhuangzi's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Zhuangzi. (n.d.). Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly…He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly was dreaming it was Zhou. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0288

MLA: Zhuangzi. “Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly…He….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0288.

Chicago: Zhuangzi. “Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly…He….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0288.

Same thinker

More from Zhuangzi

  1. Therefore it is said: The consummate person has no self; the spiritual person has no merit; the sage has no name.
  2. My life has a limit, but knowledge has none. To pursue the limitless with the limited is perilous!
  3. When the springs dry up and fish are stranded together on land, they moisten one another with dampness and wet one another with foam — but better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes.
  4. Relying on the heavenly pattern, I strike into the large gaps, guide through the large openings, and follow what is inherently so.
  5. Better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes than to moisten one another with foam when stranded.

All quotations by Zhuangzi

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme