Matsuo Basho Quotes

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music

Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. However, with practice and experience the mind is freed from the skull, and the fresh and new can appear as though for the first time. It

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

Come, butterfly It's late- We've miles to go together.

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

An autumn night - don’t think your life didn’t matter.

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.

Sabi is the color of haikai. It is different from tranquility. For example, if an old man dresses up in armor and helmet and goes to the battlefield, or in colorful brocade kimono, attending (his lord) at a banquet, [sabi] is like this old figure.

Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.

My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.

Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die

From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.

Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.

April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances

Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice... Or backyard love?

Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.

Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings

The basis of art is change in the universe.

Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud

The journey itself is my home.

Old pond, frog jumps in - plop.