Matsuo Basho quotes:

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.

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

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?

Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening

From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.

Sabi is the color of haikai. It is different from tranquility. For example, if an old man dresses up in armor and helmet and goes to the battlefield, or in colorful brocade kimono, attending (his lord) at a banquet, [sabi] is like this old figure.

Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.

Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.

Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.

Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.

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.

A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

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.

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die

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

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Come, butterfly It's late- We've miles to go together.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

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.

Seek on high bare trails Sky-reflecting violets... Mountain-top jewels

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

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

Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music

Why so scrawny, cat?Starving for fat fish or mice...Or backyard love?

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.

This autumn-why am I growing old?bird disappearing among clouds.

On this roadwhere nobody else travelsautumn nightfall.

Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.

Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.

the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

Year's end, all corners of this floating world, swept.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.

All my friends / viewing the moon "? / an ugly bunch.

Along my journey / through this transitory world, / new year's housecleaning.

An autumn night - don't think your life didn't matter.

April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances

At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water

Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice

Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate

Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water - A deep resonance.

Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.

Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.

Don't imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.

Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.

Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon

For a lovely bowl Let us arrange these flowers... For there is no rice

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

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.

How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers

I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.

I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.

If I had the knack I'd sing like Cherry flakes falling

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.

Just washed, How chill The white leeks!

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

Learn the rules, and then forget them.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.

No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

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

O cricket from your cherry cry No one would ever guess How quickly you must die.

Old dark sleepy pool... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!

Old pond, frog jumps in - plop.

Old pond, leap-splash - a frog.

Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. However, with practice and experience the mind is freed from the skull, and the fresh and new can appear as though for the first time. It

Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings

Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.

Poverty's child - he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.

Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.

Summer grasses, All that remains Of soldiers' dreams

The basis of art is change in the universe.

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

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.

The journey itself is my home.

The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.

The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound.

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.

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

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

Twilight whippoorwill... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.

When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.

Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.

Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

Year's end still in straw hat and sandals

Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!

Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud