Top 100 Matsuo Basho Quotes
#1. I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.
Matsuo Basho
#2. Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
Matsuo Basho
#3. Old dark sleepy pool ... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
Matsuo Basho
#4. He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
Matsuo Basho
#5. Everyone in this house
has gray hair, walks with a cane,
visits the graveyard
Matsuo Basho
#6. First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
Matsuo Basho
#7. From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo
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#8. Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world?
Matsuo Basho
#9. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
#10. The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
Matsuo Basho
#11. A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
Matsuo Basho
#12. On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening
Matsuo Basho
#13. Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Basho
#14. Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
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#15. For a lovely bowl
Let us arrange these flowers ...
For there is no rice
Matsuo Basho
#16. I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.
Matsuo Basho
#17. Here is a greedy man who keeps to himself
The beautiful pears ripe in his garden.
Matsuo Basho
#18. Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water - A deep resonance.
Matsuo Basho
#19. Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
Matsuo Basho
#20. 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.
Matsuo Basho
#21. A warbler singing - somewhere beyond the willow, before the thicket
Matsuo Basho
#22. A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife.
Matsuo Basho
#23. Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.
Matsuo Basho
#25. The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.
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#26. The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers
Matsuo Basho
#27. Don't imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
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#28. This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds.
Matsuo Basho
#29. Year after year
On the monkey's face:
A monkey's face.
Matsuo Basho
#30. 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.
Matsuo Basho
#31. Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice
Matsuo Basho
#32. When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.
Matsuo Basho
#33. Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
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#34. 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.
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#35. Temple of Suma
hearing the unblown flute
in the deep shade of trees
sumadera ya / fukanu fue kiku / koshitayami
Matsuo Basho
#36. Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams
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#37. The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer
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#38. 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.
Matsuo Basho
#39. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
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#40. Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.
Matsuo Basho
#41. A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes.
Matsuo Basho
#42. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.
Matsuo Basho
#43. Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.
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#44. Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around
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#45. Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon
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#46. Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
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#47. Traveler's heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.
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#48. There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores
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#49. When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.
A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.
Matsuo Basho
#50. There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
Matsuo Basho
#51. O cricket from your cherry cry
No one would ever guess
How quickly you must die.
Matsuo Basho
#52. Come, butterfly
It's late-
We've miles to go together.
Matsuo Basho
#53. The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
Matsuo Basho
#54. Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders
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#55. Twilight whippoorwill ... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness
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#56. Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey
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#58. What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
Matsuo Basho
#59. I hope to have gathered
To repay your kindness
The willow leaves
Scattered in the garden.
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#60. Searching for the scent
of the early plum,
I found it by the eaves
Of a proud storehouse.
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#61. 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
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#62. Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die
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#63. Year's end, all
corners of this
floating world, swept.
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#64. Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
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#65. I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon
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#66. I do not seek to walk in the paths of the wise men of old, I seek what they sought.
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#67. Ah, it is spring,
Great spring it is now,
Great, great spring -
Ah, Great -
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#68. Between our two lives
there is also the life of
the cherry blossom.
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#69. Chrysanthemum
Silence - monk
Sips his morning tea.
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#70. If you're an oak
you don't pretend
you are a flower
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#71. Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
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#72. All who have achieved excellence in art possess one thing in common; that is, a mind to be one with nature, throughout the seasons.
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#73. 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.
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#74. How I long to see
among dawn flowers,
the face of God.
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#75. At one time I was weary of verse writing, and wanted to give it up. At another time I was determined to be a poet until I could establish a proud name over others. The alternatives battled in my mind and made my life restless.
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#76. On this road
where nobody else travels
autumn nightfall.
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#77. The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound.
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#78. The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
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#79. 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.
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#80. With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
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#81. The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
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#82. At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water
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#84. The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.
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#85. If I had the knack
I'd sing like
Cherry flakes falling
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#86. Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.
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#87. Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.
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#88. Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count
/ Festival of the Souls.
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#89. This snowy morning
That black crow I hate so much ...
But he's so beautiful!
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#90. The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
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#91. Had I crossed the pass
Supported by a stick,
I would have spared myself
The fall from the horse.
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#92. The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.
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#93. Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.
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#94. Ballet in the air ... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate
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#95. Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
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#96. Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!
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#97. An autumn night - don't think your life didn't matter.
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#98. Along my journey / through this transitory world, / new year's housecleaning.
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#99. April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves ... a butterfly
Floats and balances
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#100. Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.
Matsuo Basho
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