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

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

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

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

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

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.

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

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

For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.

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

Old pond, frog jumps in – plop.

The journey itself is my home.

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

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

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

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

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

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I work at my garden all the time and with love. What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny.

I always notice flowers.

Pick the weeds and keep the flowers.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed.