Matsuo Basho Quotes

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

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

All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.

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.

Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.