Basho Haiku Quotes

#1. 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

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

Matsuo Basho

#3. My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham ...

Christopher Moore

#4. If I had the knack
I'd sing like
Cherry flakes falling

Matsuo Basho

#5. Many solemn nights
Blond moon, we stand and marvel...
Sleeping our noons away

Basho Matsuo

#6. Lightning
doesn't leave you enlightened
- good to know that

Matsuo Basho

#7. Old pond - frogs jumped in - sound of water

Basho Matsuo

#8. on this mountain
sorrow...tell me about it
digger of wild yams

Basho Matsuo

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

Basho Matsuo

#10. If you're an oak
you don't pretend
you are a flower

Matsuo Basho

#11. Ah, it is spring,
Great spring it is now,
Great, great spring -
Ah, Great -

Matsuo Basho

#12. I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon

Matsuo Basho

#13. Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders

Matsuo Basho

#14. 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

#15. Amorous cat, alas
You too must yowl with your love...
or even worse, without!

Basho Matsuo

#16. Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around

Matsuo Basho

#17. Moon woke me up
nine times
- still just 4 a.m.

Basho Matsuo

#18. A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes.

Matsuo Basho

#19. All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate...
Snow...unceasing snow

Basho Matsuo

#20. The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer

Matsuo Basho

#21. Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#23. 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.

Matsuo Basho

#24. Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice

Matsuo Basho

#25. This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds.

Matsuo Basho

#26. The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers

Matsuo Basho

#27. Don't touch my plumtree!
Said my friend and saying so...
Broke the branch for me

Basho Matsuo

#28. Here is a greedy man who keeps to himself
The beautiful pears ripe in his garden.

Matsuo Basho

#29. On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening

Matsuo Basho

#30. dozing on horseback
smoke form the tea-fires
drifts to the moon

Basho Matsuo

#31. Everyone in this house
has gray hair, walks with a cane,
visits the graveyard

Matsuo Basho

#32. 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