A Quote by Matsuo Basho

My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.

Matsuo Basho

Quote Topics

Age Alms Bag Bears Become Bitter Body Close Clouds Destination Eaten Fare Fifty Held Know Lost Morning Morning And Night Night Now Old Out Peaches Pilgrim Separated Shell Snail Traveler Tree Wallet Which Winds Years

Quote Author

Matsuo Basho
Japanese - Poet
1644 - November 28, 1694

Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.

Leon Edel

In my day, at 12 years old, which was 38 years ago, we worked out in summer months for two and a half hours. Today someone in that age group might work out for four hours, two hours in the morning and two at night

Mark Spitz

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.

Denise Levertov

I'm scared," she said. "These days I feel like a snail without a shell." "I'm scared too," I said. "I feel like a frog without any webs." She looked up and smiled. Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog.

Haruki Murakami

In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting for a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train

Bruce Catton

And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolations that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless creature; and a man of character, a man of action - an essentially limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am forty now, and forty years - why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the deepest of old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night! Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!

Walt Whitman

The one close to me now; even my own body--these too will soon become clouds, floating in different directions.

Izumi Shikibu

I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.

Joe Dunthorne

Learn how to grow out of yourself and into the world of others: Plant a shade tree under which you know you will never sit. Set some goals that may benefit your children or an orphanage or the employees of your company or future generations or your own city, fifty years from now.

Denis Waitley

I'm definitely a jaded traveler, but you try to make the best of what you know about the experience. Like, I know how to pack a bag. I know that checking a bag is for rookies.

Tom Segura

The mind must become the servant of the intellect, not the slave of the senses. It must discriminate and detach itself from the body. Like the ripe tamarind fruit, which, becomes loose inside the shell, it must be unattached to this shell, this casement called body.

Sathya Sai Baba

I like to think I'm a night person, because that's my job, but now I'm a father of three. I'm trying to become more of a morning person. I don't know if it will last. I have two choices, right? Either I'm bitter about getting up early, or I start drinking wine earlier and get to bed.