Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
MATSUO BASHOWith every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
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Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
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Friends part forever wild geese lost in cloud.
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Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
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On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.
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Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?
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There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
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The basis of art is change in the universe.
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How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
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Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
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Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
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Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.
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Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.
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Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.
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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.
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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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The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.
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A flute with no holes is not a flute.
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Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
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A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
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Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.
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Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
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The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
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Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
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All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
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Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO