The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.
MATSUO BASHOThe 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.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?
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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
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The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
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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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Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
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Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
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Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
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The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
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A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
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From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.
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Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
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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.
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A flute with no holes is not a flute.
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Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.
MATSUO BASHO






