Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams.
MATSUO BASHONothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water – A deep resonance.
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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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From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.
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Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
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The journey itself is my home.
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Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
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Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?
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Learn the rules, and then forget them.
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I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.
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Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
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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.
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I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.
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Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
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Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
MATSUO BASHO -
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
MATSUO BASHO -
With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
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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 universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
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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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Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
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All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
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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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Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.
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Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.
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For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.
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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.
MATSUO BASHO