Matsuo Basho Quotations

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

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

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

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

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.

At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water

Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud

Old pond, leap-splash - a frog.

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

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

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

Year's end still in straw hat and sandals

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

Learn the rules, and then forget them.

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

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

Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.

Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count -- / Festival of the Souls.

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

Year's end, all corners of this floating world, swept.

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

Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.

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

Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.

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

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poverty's child - he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.

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

Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.

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

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening

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

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

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

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

Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

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

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 old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound.

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

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

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

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.

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

Summer grasses, All that remains Of soldiers' dreams

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

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.

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

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

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

Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate

Just washed, How chill The white leeks!

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

Along my journey / through this transitory world, / new year's housecleaning.

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

Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings

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

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

The journey itself is my home.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.

Old pond, frog jumps in - plop.

How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.

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

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 basis of art is change in the universe.

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.

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.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

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

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.

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

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

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.

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