He composed poems and antithetical couplets in impeccable classical Chinese, disdaining the vernacular and even the modern innovation of punctuation. He married a Chinese and hobnobbed with such cultural luminaries as Ch'i Pai-shih and Shen Yin-mo, filling his leisure hours with the traditional pursuits of a Chinese literatus: the lute, the game of go, calligraphy, and painting.
吟詩作對、下筆文言，高羅佩不屑作白話文，也不肯用新式標點；他娶中國人為妻，時與齊白石、沈尹默等詩人墨客相往還，更過著琴棋書畫為伴的傳統文人生活。