花无百日红

花無百日紅
Huā wú bǎi rì hóng
quotation

Meanings

  1. 1 no flower blooms red for a hundred days
  2. 2 good times don't last forever
  3. 3 beauty and prosperity are fleeting

Examples

HSK 5
Rén wú qiān rì hǎo, huā wú bǎi rì hóng, shìyè yǒu qǐ yǒu luò hěn zhèngcháng.
No one has a thousand good days, no flower stays red for a hundred - a career's ups and downs are entirely normal.
HSK 6
Huā wú bǎi rì hóng, rénshēng fēngguāng de shíhou yě yào qiānxū.
No flower blooms for a hundred days - even when life is at its brightest you should stay humble.

Tips

history
A proverb crystallized in Yuan-Ming vernacular theater and fiction; the Ming-Qing household anthology 《增广贤文》 pairs it as 人无千日好, 花无百日红 - 'no one has a thousand good days; no flower blooms red for a hundred.' It is widely read as meaning 'good times do not last long.'
usage
Almost always quoted with its twin 人无千日好. The pair is folk wisdom about the impermanence of fortune - often used as consolation, occasionally as a warning against overconfidence.

Stroke Order

花 huā
无 wú
百 bǎi
日 rì
红 hóng