50 Beautiful and Brilliant Quotes about Cherry Blossoms

Jared Jeric dela Cruz

When people think of spring, they think of flowers. But in Japan, there is one particular flower that comes to mind – the cherry blossom, or the sakura. Perhaps the most iconic symbol of springtime in the Land of the Rising Sun, the cherry blossom is highly regarded – revered almost – by the Japanese. Its delicate pastel pink or white hue, its striking beauty, and its poignant fleetingness have all combined to give it a special place in Japanese art, culture, and philosophy. Throughout the years, it has inspired countless poets, writers, and philosophers – Japanese and otherwise – to write about it, whether in praise of its beauty or in lament of its evanescence. If you’re looking for just such quotes about cherry blossoms, here are fifty of the most beautiful and brilliant quotes ever written about those elegant, exquisite, and ephemeral flowers.

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“A cherry tree was coming into bloom, shooting out a froth of sugar-pink blossoms. She could see from its size and the gnarled branches that it was a mature tree, yet still capable of putting on such a wonderful show. A new beginning every spring, even from an old tree.” – Maggie Alderson

“Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decrepitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks.” – John Burnham Schwartz

“And so the spring buds burst, and so I gaze,
And so the blossoms fall, and so my days …” – Onitsura

“Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring – these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration.” – Yoshida Kenkō

“As the cherry blossoms bloom, festive picnics called hanami usher in the spring with elaborate spreads of miso salmon, mountain vegetables, colorful bento, and fresh mochi turned pink with sakura petals.” – Matt Goulding

“Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.” –Matsuo Bashō

“Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers;
But the spring breeze
Brings forth myriad blossoms.” – Ikkyū

“Cherry blossoms on the tree,
Their scent of sweetness is divine.” – Linda Winchell

“Come see the cherry trees of a water constellation
and the round key of the rapid universe,
come touch the fire of instantaneous blue,
come before its petals are consumed.” – Pablo Neruda

“Donated by Japan, cherry blossoms grace the paths where a wall once stood in Berlin. Walls divide. Flowers unite.” – Khang Kijarro Nguyen

“Double cherry blossoms
Flutter in the wind
One petal after another.” – Masaoka Shiki

“Due to their short bloom time, Sakura blossoms are a metaphor for life itself: beautiful yet fleeting. You’ll realize when you’re as old as me to hang on to the good times because they won’t last forever.” – Shannon M. Mullen

“For in spite of the snapdragons and the duty millers and the cherry blossoms, it was always winter.” – Janet Frame

“From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.” – Matsuo Bashō

“I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.” – Ruth Ozeki

“I’ve seen spring come to the orchard every year as far back as I can remember and I’ve never grown tired of it. Oh, the wonder of it! The outrageous beauty! God didn’t have to give us cherry blossoms you know. He didn’t have to make apple trees and peach trees burst into flower and fragrance. But God just loves to splurge. He gives us all this magnificence and then, if that isn’t enough, He provides fruit from such extravagance.” – Lynn Austin

“I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Neruda

“If I were asked to explain the Japanese spirit, I would say it is wild cherry blossoms glowing in the morning sun!” – Motoori Norinaga

“If there were no cherry blossoms in this world
How much more tranquil our hearts would be in spring.” – Ariwara no Narihira

“In the cherry blossom’s shade there’s no such thing as a stranger.” – Kobayashi Issa

“In these spring days,
when tranquil light encompasses
the four directions,
why do the blossoms scatter
with such uneasy hearts?” – Ki no Tomonori

“It is true, as they say, that the blossoms of spring are all the more precious because they bloom so briefly.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment that we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal.” – Erik Pevernagie

“Light as feathers, as fleeting as Zephyr, one moment they breathed pink, the next they faded. Cherry blossoms were as much an inspiration for beautiful verse as they were a reminder of life’s fickleness, she thought.” – Alice Poon

“Look at the cherry blossoms!
Their color and scent fall with them,
Are gone forever,
Yet mindless
The spring comes again.” – Ikkyū

“Looking about I see no cherry blossoms
And no crimson leaves
A straw-thatched hut by a bay
In the autumn dusk.” – Fujiwara no Teika

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now.
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride.
Wearing white for Eastertide.” – A. E. Housman

“Mist trailed through a garden pale beneath thinning branches, to merge here and there with the blossoms and yield a scene more beautiful than any autumn night.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“O that I had sleeve enough to cover the wide sky! No wind should then take the flowers that blossom in spring.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“On a moonlit night, after a snowfall, or under cherry blossoms, it adds to our pleasure if, while chatting at our ease, we bring forth the wine cups.” – Yoshida Kenkō

“One day we strolled down the Philosopher’s Path, which proved as enchanting as I had hoped in the fragrant pink bloom of spring. Since ancient times, the Japanese have heralded the arrival of the cherry blossoms because they symbolize the ephemeral beauty of life. But it isn’t just the three or four days of open flowers that stirs the senses. It is their arrival and departure. Looking at a bud about to burst open offers the pleasurable anticipation of rebirth, while the soft scattering of petals on the ground is often considered the most beautiful stage of all because it represents the death of the flowers.” – Victoria Abbott Riccardi

“She made a figure so beautiful and so perfect in size that she seemed to perfume all the air around her and, to express it in terms of flowers, to put even cherry blossoms to shame.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“Soldiers falling fast
Battle of white and scarlet
Blossoms on the ground.” – David Kudler

“Suddenly she was seeing the buds on the cherry trees around her; she could feel the energy packed within them, a bouquet of fireworks whose fuse had already been lit. She could smell them, too, a subtle essence of pink and lollipops, the sweetness deepened by the scent of the slowly warming earth below them.” – Erica Bauermeister

“The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention.” – Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

“The cherry blossom season was over, but two of His Excellency’s trees must have consented to wait, for they were in late and glorious bloom.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“The cherry blossom tree is truly a sight to behold, especially when it is in full riotous bloom. There are several varieties of the cherry blossom tree, and while most of them produce flowering branches full of small pinkish-hued flowers, some of them produce actual cherries.” – Homaro Cantu

“The first time I saw a fingerbowl was at the home of my benefactress. […] The water had a few cherry blossoms in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms.” – Sylvia Plath

“The Japanese school year begins in spring. So mothers can send off their children as cherry blossoms fall from the branches.” – Cathy Davidson

“The notion is called wabi-sabi life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.” – Peggy Orenstein

“The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.” – Matsuo Bashō

“The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years. In their country, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and the beauty of life. It’s a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short.” – Homaro Cantu

“The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one’s guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms.” – Maxine Hong Kingston

“There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you.” – Murasaki Shikibu

“They hung in huge clusters from the black austerity of the branches like a mass of white seashells spread over a reef. The evening wind made the curtains billow along the path, and when it caught the tips of the branches, they bent gracefully in a rustle of blossoms. Then the great, widespread branches themselves began to sway with an easy grandeur under their weight of white. The pallor of the flowers was tinged here and there by pink clusters of buds. And with almost invisible subtlety, the star-shaped centre of each blossom was marked with pink in tiny, sharp strokes, like the stitches holding a button in place.” – Yukio Mishima

“We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness – and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there’s no problem.” – William McDonough

“What a strange thing!
to be alive,
beneath cherry blossoms.” – Kobayashi Issa

“[W]hen the mind is really absent, in that silence, in that unlimited space, your potential starts glowing, radiating, flowering. Suddenly you are full of cherry blossoms, a new presence, a new fragrance.” – Rajneesh

“White Cherry Blossom
Behold the joy of spring,
As white cherry blossom blooms,
For it will be over soon.” – Christopher Tye

“Yes, the cherry trees put this truth very plainly: none of the glory of blossoms and autumn leaves lasts long in this fleeting world.” – Murasaki Shikibu