Top 100 Basho Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Basho

#1. 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.

Richard Flanagan

#2. Learn the rules well. Then forget them." ~ Basho

Alvin Alexander

#3. If he had had no education, maybe Basho could have been a much greater poet.

Nanao Sakaki

#4. 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

#5. Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.

Matsuo Basho

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

Basho Matsuo

#7. I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Matsuo Basho

#8. Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.

Matsuo Basho

#9. Old dark sleepy pool ... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!

Matsuo Basho

#10. 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

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

Matsuo Basho

#12. First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.

Matsuo Basho

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

Basho Matsuo

#14. From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

Matsuo Basho

#15. Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world?

Matsuo Basho

#16. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho

#17. 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

#18. A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#21. Seek on high bare trails
Sky-reflecting violets...
Mountain-top jewels

Basho Matsuo

#22. Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.

Matsuo Basho

#23. For a lovely bowl
Let us arrange these flowers ...
For there is no rice

Matsuo Basho

#24. I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

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

Basho Matsuo

#27. Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water - A deep resonance.

Matsuo Basho

#28. Lonely stillness - a single cicada's cry sinking into stone

Basho Matsuo

#29. Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.

Matsuo Basho

#30. 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

#31. A warbler singing - somewhere beyond the willow, before the thicket

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#33. Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Matsuo Basho

#34. A flute with no holes is not a flute.

Matsuo Basho

#35. The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#37. Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#39. Year's end still in straw hat and sandals

Matsuo Basho

#40. Even in Kyoto longing for Kyoto hototogisu

Basho Matsuo

#41. Don't imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#43. Year after year
On the monkey's face:
A monkey's face.

Matsuo Basho

#44. 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

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

Matsuo Basho

#46. When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#48. The past remains hidden in clouds of memory.

Basho Matsuo

#49. 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

#50. Temple of Suma
hearing the unblown flute
in the deep shade of trees
sumadera ya / fukanu fue kiku / koshitayami

Matsuo Basho

#51. you make the fire
and I'll show you something wonderful:
a big ball of snow!

Basho Matsuo

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

Matsuo Basho

#53. In this world of ours,
We eat only to cast out,
Sleep only to wake,
And what comes after all that
Is simply to die at last.

Matsuo Basho

#54. The journey itself is my home.

Basho Matsuo

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

Matsuo Basho

#56. Moonlit plum tree-
wait,
spring will come.

Basho Matsuo

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

Matsuo Basho

#58. 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

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

Basho Matsuo

#60. There we did begin, Cloisterd in the waterfall, Our summer discipline.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#62. Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#64. Cormorant fishing:
How stirring,
How saddening

Basho Matsuo

#65. 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

#66. Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#69. Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#71. Traveler's heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.

Matsuo Basho

#72. 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

Matsuo Basho

#73. 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

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

Basho Matsuo

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

Matsuo Basho

#76. O cricket from your cherry cry
No one would ever guess
How quickly you must die.

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

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

Matsuo Basho

#79. 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

#80. Hidden and unknown
Like the new moon
I will live my life

Basho Matsuo

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

Matsuo Basho

#82. Twilight whippoorwill ... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness

Matsuo Basho

#83. Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

Matsuo Basho

#84. Just washed, How chill The white leeks!

Matsuo Basho

#85. 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

#86. Along this road goes no one, this autumn eve.

Basho Matsuo

#87. Wintery day,
On my horse
A frozen shadow.

Basho Matsuo

#88. I hope to have gathered
To repay your kindness
The willow leaves
Scattered in the garden.

Matsuo Basho

#89. Searching for the scent
of the early plum,
I found it by the eaves
Of a proud storehouse.

Matsuo Basho

#90. 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

Matsuo Basho