Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Matsuo Basho, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Matsuo Basho quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 119 Matsuo Basho quotes for you to read and share.
Old dark sleepy pool ... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash! -- Matsuo Basho
Temple of Suma
hearing the unblown flute
in the deep shade of trees
sumadera ya / fukanu fue kiku / koshitayami -- Matsuo Basho
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. -- Matsuo Basho
How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers -- Matsuo Basho
Year after year
On the monkey's face:
A monkey's face. -- Matsuo Basho
This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds. -- Matsuo Basho
The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white. -- Matsuo Basho
The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms. -- Matsuo Basho
Learn the rules, and then forget them. -- Matsuo Basho
Ah, it is spring,
Great spring it is now,
Great, great spring -
Ah, Great - -- Matsuo Basho
Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering. -- Matsuo Basho
I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories. -- Matsuo Basho
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. -- Matsuo Basho
This snowy morning
That black crow I hate so much ...
But he's so beautiful! -- Matsuo Basho
Searching for the scent
of the early plum,
I found it by the eaves
Of a proud storehouse. -- Matsuo Basho
Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life. -- Matsuo Basho
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
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. -- Matsuo Basho
When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind. -- Matsuo Basho
Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty. -- Matsuo Basho
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. -- Matsuo Basho
A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife. -- Matsuo Basho
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
Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world? -- Matsuo Basho
Year's end still in straw hat and sandals -- Matsuo Basho
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
Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon. -- Matsuo Basho
Why so scrawny, cat?
Starving for fat fish or mice ...
Or backyard love? -- Matsuo Basho
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. -- Matsuo Basho
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
The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer -- Matsuo Basho
Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey -- Matsuo Basho
Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water - A deep resonance. -- Matsuo Basho
Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders -- Matsuo Basho
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought. -- Matsuo Basho
The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers -- Matsuo Basho
Here is a greedy man who keeps to himself
The beautiful pears ripe in his garden. -- Matsuo Basho
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
Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice -- Matsuo Basho
Everyone in this house
has gray hair, walks with a cane,
visits the graveyard -- Matsuo Basho
On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening -- Matsuo Basho
If I had the knack
I'd sing like
Cherry flakes falling -- Matsuo Basho
Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock. -- Matsuo Basho
April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves ... a butterfly
Floats and balances -- Matsuo Basho
From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall. -- Matsuo Basho
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
Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone. -- Matsuo Basho
Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon -- Matsuo Basho
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. -- Matsuo Basho
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. -- Matsuo Basho
I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air. -- Matsuo Basho
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
All who have achieved excellence in art possess one thing in common; that is, a mind to be one with nature, throughout the seasons. -- Matsuo Basho
If you're an oak
you don't pretend
you are a flower -- Matsuo Basho
An autumn night - don't think your life didn't matter. -- Matsuo Basho
First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge. -- Matsuo Basho
Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto -- Matsuo Basho
Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing. -- Matsuo Basho
I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon -- Matsuo Basho
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
The moon is brighter since the barn burned. -- Matsuo Basho
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
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
A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors. -- Matsuo Basho
In the end, without skill or talent, I've given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chu-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we ALL live in phantom huts. -- Matsuo Basho
Just washed, How chill The white leeks! -- Matsuo Basho
Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem. -- Matsuo Basho
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
Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant. -- Matsuo Basho
On this road
where nobody else travels
autumn nightfall. -- Matsuo Basho
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo -- Matsuo Basho
How I long to see
among dawn flowers,
the face of God. -- Matsuo Basho
Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams -- Matsuo Basho
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains! -- Matsuo Basho
Chrysanthemum
Silence - monk
Sips his morning tea. -- Matsuo Basho
Between our two lives
there is also the life of
the cherry blossom. -- Matsuo Basho
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine. -- Matsuo Basho
With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow. -- Matsuo Basho
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. -- Matsuo Basho
Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn. -- Matsuo Basho
Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around -- Matsuo Basho
Don't imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon. -- Matsuo Basho
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer? -- Matsuo Basho
Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River. -- Matsuo Basho
A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes. -- Matsuo Basho
Not knowing the name of the tree,
I stood in the flood
of its sweet scent. -- Matsuo Basho
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
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon. -- Matsuo Basho
Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die -- Matsuo Basho
I do not seek to walk in the paths of the wise men of old, I seek what they sought. -- Matsuo Basho
Had I crossed the pass
Supported by a stick,
I would have spared myself
The fall from the horse. -- Matsuo Basho
Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops. -- Matsuo Basho
There we did begin, Cloisterd in the waterfall, Our summer discipline. -- Matsuo Basho
At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water -- Matsuo Basho
O cricket from your cherry cry
No one would ever guess
How quickly you must die. -- Matsuo Basho
Along my journey / through this transitory world, / new year's housecleaning. -- Matsuo Basho
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world. -- Matsuo Basho
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself. -- Matsuo Basho
Lightning
doesn't leave you enlightened
- good to know that -- Matsuo Basho
Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves. -- Matsuo Basho
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
The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound. -- Matsuo Basho
Twilight whippoorwill ... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness -- Matsuo Basho
Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest. -- Matsuo Basho
The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being. -- Matsuo Basho
No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it. -- Matsuo Basho
Come, butterfly
It's late-
We've miles to go together. -- Matsuo Basho
Traveler's heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire. -- Matsuo Basho
Seek not the paths of the ancients;
Seek that which the ancients sought. -- Matsuo Basho
Year's end, all
corners of this
floating world, swept. -- Matsuo Basho
I hope to have gathered
To repay your kindness
The willow leaves
Scattered in the garden. -- Matsuo Basho
For a lovely bowl
Let us arrange these flowers ...
For there is no rice -- Matsuo Basho
Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too. -- Matsuo Basho
A flute with no holes is not a flute. -- Matsuo Basho
A warbler singing - somewhere beyond the willow, before the thicket -- Matsuo Basho
Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves. -- Matsuo Basho
Ballet in the air ... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate -- Matsuo Basho
Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind. -- Matsuo Basho
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count
/ Festival of the Souls. -- Matsuo Basho
