Basho Haiku Quotes & Sayings

Lightning
doesn't leave you enlightened
- good to know that — Matsuo Basho

I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon — Matsuo Basho

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

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

Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around — Matsuo Basho

dozing on horseback
smoke form the tea-fires
drifts to the moon — Basho Matsuo

Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind - filled with a strong desire to wander. — Matsuo Basho

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

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

Don't touch my plumtree!
Said my friend and saying so...
Broke the branch for me — Basho Matsuo

The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer — Matsuo Basho

If you're an oak
you don't pretend
you are a flower — Matsuo Basho

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

Amorous cat, alas
You too must yowl with your love...
or even worse, without! — Basho Matsuo

Ah, it is spring,
Great spring it is now,
Great, great spring -
Ah, Great - — Matsuo Basho

Mountain-rose petals
Falling, falling, falling now...
Waterfall music — Basho Matsuo

My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham ... — Christopher Moore

The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers — Matsuo Basho

Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth. — Stephen Batchelor

on this mountain
sorrow...tell me about it
digger of wild yams — Basho Matsuo

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

Everyone in this house
has gray hair, walks with a cane,
visits the graveyard — Matsuo Basho

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening — Matsuo Basho

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

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 Basho

Here is a greedy man who keeps to himself
The beautiful pears ripe in his garden. — Matsuo Basho

Old pond - frogs jumped in - sound of water — Basho Matsuo

A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes. — Matsuo Basho

Many solemn nights
Blond moon, we stand and marvel...
Sleeping our noons away — Basho Matsuo

Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders — Matsuo Basho

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

All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate...
Snow...unceasing snow — Basho Matsuo

Moon woke me up
nine times
- still just 4 a.m. — Basho Matsuo

Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams — Matsuo Basho