Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?
MATSUO BASHOOld pond, leap-splash – a frog.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
MATSUO BASHO -
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.
MATSUO BASHO -
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.
MATSUO BASHO -
Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps’ nest.
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 -
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO -
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
MATSUO BASHO -
Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
MATSUO BASHO -
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
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 -
All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
MATSUO BASHO -
Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end – tonight’s moon.
MATSUO BASHO -
Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams.
MATSUO BASHO -
Learn the rules, and then forget them.
MATSUO BASHO -
Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
MATSUO BASHO






