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 BASHOEvery moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.
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Old pond, leap-splash – a frog.
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The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
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Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
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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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For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.
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The 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.
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The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
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The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
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Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
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A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
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Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
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Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
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Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.
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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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Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?
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Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
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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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He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
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At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water.
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Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
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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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Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
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Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
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Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
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Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
MATSUO BASHO