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If not for solitude,
how dismal my life would be!

— Saigyo Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

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Alone

More quotes by Saigyo

The cherries'
only fault:
the crowds
that gather
when they bloom.

Let me not spend my life
lamenting the world’s sorrows
for above
in the wide sky
the moon shines pure

Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021)

Even a person
free of passion
would be moved to sadness:
autumn evening in a marsh
where snipes fly up.

It creates a heart
even in those among us
who think of themselves
as indifferent to all things—
the world. this first wind of autumn.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

How I delight
in this well-timed snow
that buries the mountain path
behind me as I enter
intent on long seclusion

Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021)

All Saigyo quotes →

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When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

Walter Scott Marmion (1808)

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Sylvester Stallone

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

Attribution

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