Top 60 Matsuo Bashō Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

3. “The journey itself is my home.”

— Matsuo Bashō

4. “An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.”

— Matsuo Bashō

5. “Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

7. “Old pond, frog jumps in – plop.”

— Matsuo Bashō

8. “Learn the rules, and then forget them.”

— Matsuo Bashō

9. “Come, butterfly It’s late- We’ve miles to go together.”

— Matsuo Bashō

10. “A flute with no holes is not a flute.”

— Matsuo Bashō

11. “Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

13. “Poverty’s child – he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.”

— Matsuo Bashō

14. “Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.”

— Matsuo Bashō

15. “Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.”

— Matsuo Bashō

16. “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.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

19. “Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

23. “Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end – tonight’s moon.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

25. “Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

27. “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 Bashō

28. “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.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

30. “From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.”

— Matsuo Bashō

31. “First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.”

— Matsuo Bashō

32. “I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

34. “When I speak My lips feel cold – The autumn wind.”

— Matsuo Bashō

35. “Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud.”

— Matsuo Bashō

36. “Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water – A deep resonance.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

39. “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.”

— Matsuo Bashō

40. “How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō

43. “On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.”

— Matsuo Bashō

44. “Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly’s wings.”

— Matsuo Bashō

45. “Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.”

— Matsuo Bashō

46. “Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.”

— Matsuo Bashō

47. “The basis of art is change in the universe.”

— Matsuo Bashō

48. “At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water.”

— Matsuo Bashō

49. “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.”

— Matsuo Bashō

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

— Matsuo Bashō