Life is as thin as paper. What do you mean?

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. The original text is: the heart is higher than the sky, as a humble, romantic and intelligent person.