Skip to content

The fact that Saigyō composed the poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote:
In the mountain village
who are you calling, yobuko-bird?
I thought you lived alone.

— Matsuo Bashō

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Robert Hass (1994) The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa

More quotes by Matsuo Bashō

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

Oku no Hosomichi - The Narrow Road to the Interior (1702)

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

I am one
Who eats his breakfast,
Gazing at morning glories.

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

Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields.

All Matsuo Bashō quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Matsuo Bashō (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.