Sam Hamill > Quotes

“Don’t tell me
about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to me
about eternal California summer.
It’s enough to have
a few days naked
among three hundred kinds of rain.”
― Sam Hamill

“Winter rain on moss soundlessly recalls those happy bygone days”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“Poetry transcends the nation-state. Poetry transcends government. It brings the traditional concept of power to its knees. I have always believed poetry to be an eternal conversation in which the ancient poets remain contemporary, a conversation inviting us into other languages and cultures even as poetry transcends language and culture, returning us again and again to primal rhythms and sounds.”
― Sam Hamill

“Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognizing virtue recognizes evil.

Is and is not produce one another.
The difficult is born in the easy,
long is defined by short, the high by the low.”
― Sam Hamill, Tao Te Ching

“Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“It's best to be like water,
nurturing the ten thousand things
without competing,
flowing into places people scorn,
very like the Tao.

Make the earth a dwelling place.
Cultivate the heart and mind.
Practice benevolence.
Stand by your word.
Govern with equity.
Serve skillfully.
Act in a timely way,
without contentiousness,
free of blame.”
― Sam Hamill, Tao Te Ching

“Heaven is eternal. The earth endures.

The reason for heaven's eternity and earth's endurance
is that they do not live for themselves only,
and thereby live forever.

The sage steps back but remains in front,
the outside always within.

Self is realized through selflessness.”
― Sam Hamill, Tao Te Ching

“How reluctantly the bee emerges from deep within the peony”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“I STAND here and watch the people of this world: all against one and one against all, angry, arguing, plotting and scheming. Then one day, suddenly, they die. And each gets one plot of ground: four feet wide, six feet long. If you can scheme your way out of that plot, I’ll set the stone that immortalizes your name.”
― Sam Hamill, The Poetry of Zen

“In pale moonlight the wisteria’s scent comes from far away”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“When the mind stops striving, the world’s not a problem. A constant heart won’t waver from the truth.”
― Sam Hamill, The Poetry of Zen

“Autumn approaches and the heart begins to dream. — Bashō, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets (Shambhala, November 14, 2006)”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“CALL it loneliness, that deep, beautiful color no one can describe: over these dark mountains, the gathering autumn dusk.”
― Sam Hamill, The Poetry of Zen

“I write in my notebook with the intention of stimulating good conversation, hoping that it will also be of use to some fellow traveler. But perhaps my notes are mere drunken chatter, the incoherent babbling of a dreamer. If so, read them as such.”
― Sam Hamill, The Poetry of Zen

“With dewdrops dripping, I wish somehow I could wash this perishing world”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“I go out alone to visit a man alone in this autumn dusk”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“This cold winter night, that old wooden-head buddha would make a nice fire”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“Summer grasses: all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“With a warbler for
a soul, it sleeps peacefully,
this mountain willow.”
― Sam Hamill

“I believe the poem is a sacramental act, pure devotion to whatever may be revealed only through the music of intuition. The dance of the intellect, the dance of wild imagination, illuminates what cannot otherwise be known.”
― Sam Hamill, Almost Paradise: New and Selected Poems and Translations

“Is and is not produce one another. The difficult is born in the easy, long is defined by short, the high by the low. Instrument and voice achieve one harmony. Before and after have places. That is why the sage can act without effort and teach without words, nurture things without possessing them, and accomplish things without expecting merit: only one who makes no attempt to possess it cannot lose it.”
― Sam Hamill, The Poetry of Zen

“Thus spring begins: old stupidities repeated, new errs invented”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

“BASHŌ’S DEATH POEM Sick on my journey, only my dreams will wander these desolate moors”
― Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets