Matsuo Bashō · 224 pages
Rating: (454 votes)
“Sadly, I part from you;
Like a clam torn from its shell,
I go, and autumn too.”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings
“Lonely stillness— a single cicada’s cry sinking into stone”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings
“A warbler singing— somewhere beyond the willow, before the thicket”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings
“The past remains hidden in clouds of memory.”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings
“Spring passes
and the birds cry out—tears
in the eyes of fishes”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings
“The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, quote from Leonardo's Notebooks
“Why worry about something that isn’t? Worrying about something that might happen is not a healthy pastime. A man’s a fool to live his life under a shadow like that. Maybe that’s how an ulcer begins. I”
― quote from One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
“Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.
Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.”
― Joyce Cary, quote from The Horse's Mouth
“…I had a good title already. My book was originally called Loser: A Brief History of Notable Failures. But American publishers don’t like this. Losing is a bad thing in our country. It’s not allowed.”
― Paul Collins, quote from Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books
“The prospect Smiler was a manic farmer. Few men I think can have been as unfortunate as he; for on the one hand he was a melancholic with a loathing for mankind, on the other, some paralysis had twisted his mouth into a permanent and radiant smile. So everyone he met, being warmed by his smile, would shout him a happy greeting. And beaming upon them with his sunny face he would curse them all to hell.”
― Laurie Lee, quote from Cider With Rosie
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