Haiku Quotes

• Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.

  Santoka Taneda

  Deep Breath, Howl, Sigh

  56 Copy quote

• 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

  Three, Lifetime, Poet

  "Collected Haiku Theory". Book by Matsuo Bashō, 1951.

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• 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

  Writing, Positivity, Hair

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• 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

  Fifty, Tire, Subjects

  "Collected Haiku Theory". Book by Matsuo Bashō, 1951.

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• The only problem
  with Haiku is that you just
  get started and then

  Roger McGough

  Poetry, Problem

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

  Matsuo Basho

  Inspirational, Nature, Healing

  Matsuo Basho (2014). “Basho's Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages”, p.31, Stone Bridge Press, Inc.

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• Haiku is an art that seems dedicated to making people pay attention to the preciousness and particularity of every moment of existence. I think that poetry can do that.

  Robert Hass

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Life, Expression, Enlightenment

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1951). “Haiku: Eastern culture”

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• Meaning lies as much in the mind of the reader as in the Haiku.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Lying, Mind, Reader

  25 Copy quote

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

  Matsuo Basho

  Fall, Rose, Mountain

  109 Copy quote

• Haiku is a way of culling things from the stream of things that rush past the senses.

  Michael J. Rosen

  Past, Way, Culling

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• To me, photography is not just a visual art, but something closer to poetry - or at least to some poetry, such as the haiku.

  Frank Horvat

  Photography, Art, Visuals

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• I seldom feel trapped by my world. Setting up rules and restrictions is part of the process. It gives your world shape. I always look at these things like haiku: you have to work within certain parameters, but within them, you’re completely free.

  Richard Kadrey

  Giving, Looks, World

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• The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.

  Mason Cooley

  Aphorism, Pins, Let Me

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• O snail Climb Mount Fuji But slowly, slowly!

  Kobayashi Issa

  Buddhist, Struggle, Snail

  28 Copy quote

• The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

  Anne Bancroft

  Poetry, Should, Self Glorification

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• Haiku sounds like I'm Saying hi to someone named Ku. Hi, Ku. Hello.

  Ellen DeGeneres

  Sound, Hello, Saying Hi

  Ellen DeGeneres (2011). “Seriously...I'm Kidding”, p.37, Hachette UK

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• Architecture is a discipline that takes time and patience. If one spends enough years writing complex novels one might be able, someday, to construct a respectable haiku.

  Thom Mayne

  Patience, Time, Writing

  61 Copy quote

• In the cherry blossom's shade there's no such thing as a stranger.

  Kobayashi Issa

  Flower, Japan, Shade

  95 Copy quote

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

  Matsuo Basho

  Sweet, Loneliness, Twilight

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• The love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry; these three things are one thing. This is the unspoken creed of haiku poets.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Love, Religion, Three

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1995). “The genius of haiku: readings from R.H. Blyth on poetry, life, and Zen”

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

  Matsuo Basho

  Spring, Butterfly, Air

  27 Copy quote

• Haiku is a particularly Zen form of poetry; for Zen detests egoism in the form of calculated effects or self-glorification of any sort. The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

  Anne Bancroft

  Self, Form, Should

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• The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!

  Roland Barthes

  Children, Gestures, Shows

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• It is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular group of phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through which it reveals a whole world of experience. It is not only in its remarkable use of the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of a quarter of the year; nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar quality is its self-effacing, self-annihilative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Art, Nature, Self

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1982). “Haiku: Haiku”

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