Did you know that you don’t have to visit Japan to enjoy the spectacular phenomenon of sakura? The cherry blossom capital of the world is actually located in Georgia! It is in Macon that you can see over 300,000 Yoshino cherry blossom trees. Here are the best cherry blossom quotes that capture the beauty of this spectacle of nature!
1. “I’d like to divide myself in order to see, among these mountains, each and every flower of every cherry tree.” – Saigyo
2. “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
3. “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
4. “When 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
5. “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
6. “It is spring time now! While the world looks for a new war to fight, you look for a cherry blossom to watch! Let the stupid seek the violence; you seek the elegance!” –Mehmet Murat ildan
7. “Since ancient times, the Japanese have heralded the arrival of the cherry blossoms because they symbolize the ephemeral beauty of life.” – Victoria Abbott Riccardi
8. “It would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery
9. “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
10. “And so the spring buds burst, and so I gaze, and so the blossoms fall, and so my days.” – Onitsura
Did you know that cherry blossom petals are actually edible? The Japanese use them in many sweets recipes and Japanese teas as well!
11. “Darling, you’re the beauty of a hummingbird and the standstill of a cherry blossom.” – Cheyenne Raine
12. “You are not built to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.” — Oprah Winfrey
13. “The fragrant fallen blossoms have passed me by, I closed my eyes for a moment and thought of you.” – Denis J Ryan Harman
14. “For in spite of the snapdragons and the dusty millers and the cherry blossoms, it was always winter.” – Janet Frame
15. “Only in dreams of spring shall I ever see again the flowering of my cherry trees.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
16. “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
17. “Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.” – Ikkyu Sojun
18. “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
19. “Everything blooms in its own time.” – Ken Petti
20. “Cherry blossoms on the tree, their scent of sweetness is divine.” – Linda Winchell
“Hanami”, meaning flower viewing, stands for the tradition of picnicking beneath sakura that probably began with emperors and members of the Imperial Palace.
21. “Soldiers falling fast, battle of white and scarlet, blossoms on the ground.” ― David Kudler
22. “I wouldn’t mind if life left me… wingless burnt to cinders ripped by storms scattered…like weeds celestially wounded without cherry blossoms to perish with but I would cry with head held in my hands if it left me… unfulfilled.” – Sanober Khan
23. “The Japanese school year begins in spring. So mothers can send off their children as cherry blossoms fall from the branches.” – Cathy Davidson
24. “The cherry blossoms have a spiritual meaning for the Japanese people.” – Ann McClellan
25. “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough.” – A. E. Housman
26. “From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.” – Matsuo Basho
27. “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
28. “Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration.” – Yoshida Kenko
29. “Cherry blossoms are explored as symbols in Japanese art and artifacts, and in images of Japonism found in Western art.” — Ann McClellan
30. “It is true, as they say, that the blossoms of spring are all the more precious because they bloom so briefly.” – Murasaki Shikibu
It is speculated that cherry blossoms actually originated in Eurasia – probably in the Himalayas.
31. “The cloud-like effect of the cherry trees in bloom on Mount Yoshino has inspired poets and common folk in Japan for over a thousand years.” – Ann McClellan
32. “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
33. “If I were asked to explain the Japanese spirit, I would say it is wild cherry blossoms glowing in the morning sun!” – Motoori Norinaga
34. “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
35. “Look at the cherry blossoms! Their color and scent fall with them, are gone forever, yet mindless. The spring comes again.” – Ikkyu Sojun
36. “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
37. “What’s your story baby? No control of what I am saying, winter leaves still make me believe. No vendettas, just a cherry blossom tree.” — Manic Street Preachers
38. “Sad bright eyes are cherry blossoms your true love will never wake up.” – Communique
39. “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
40. “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
There are 200 different varieties of the cherry blossom tree, however, the most popular variety in Japan is Somei Yoshino.
41. “Love is like cherry blossoms. They bloom at the first promise of spring. They beautify even the grayest landscape, they scatter at the first gust of wind. But as they hold, when you look at them, you steal a little view of paradise.” – Georgia Kakalopoulou
42. “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
43. “Donated by Japan, cherry blossoms grace the paths where a wall once stood in Berlin. Walls divide. Flowers unite.” – Khang Kijarro Nguyen
44. “Flowers enshrine my heart between their petals; that’s why my heartbeats love them so much.” – Munia Khan
45. “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 Kenko
46. “I thought, cherry blossoms in spring. But with you around, it blossoms anytime.” – Rima Reyka
47. “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
48. “If in this world there were no such thing as cherry blossoms, perhaps then in springtime our hearts would be at peace. ” – Ariwara no Narihira
49. “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 spring—these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration.” – Yoshida Kenko
50. “I will bring you flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Neruda
Cherry blossom trees are usually pink, but the Ukon Sakura variety is yellowish in color!
51. “A perfect cherry blossom is a rare thing. You can spend your whole life looking for one, and it will not be a wasted life.” – Katsumoto
52. “Sakura, sakura they fall in the dreams of sleeping beauty.” – Yosa Buson
53. “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
54. “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
55. “My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms — will it return to my body when they scatter?” — Kotomichi
56. “One of the legends suggesting why the cherry trees’ blossoms are so exquisite and ephemeral says that the fairy Ko-no-hana-sakuya-hime, the ‘maiden who causes trees to bloom,’ hovers low in the spring sky, awakening the sleeping trees with her delicate breath.” – Ann McClellan
57. “Love blossoms into the most beautiful of flowers.” – Cam Richmond
58. “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
59. “Outside it’s a perfect spring night. We stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me around and soon we’re dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound of cars whooshing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the trees.” – Audrey Niffenegger
60. “I bloomed up all over again despite knowing, cherry blossoms are only meant to wither.” – Eayra
Cherry trees typically last for 16-20 years only!
61. “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.” – Junichiro Tanizaki
62. “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
63. “And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing: the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.” – Rachel Wetzsteon
64. “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
65. “I’ll be like a Sakura Tree branching out to touch everybody’s soul and their inner sense of beauty.” – Haruhi
66. “Cherry blossom I can’t let you go I’m not an expert, but I know you’re like gold. You pop up, shine bright, then you hit the road.” – Jon Vinyl
67. “Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.” – Matsuo Basho
68. “Cherry blossom, cherry blossom, it’s the air that we breathe. How have we forgotten what it means to be.” – Haelos
69. “I feel as though as I touch those cherry-blossom petals, cup the budding cherry flowers in my hands, I am slowly, yet lovingly stroking Brigid’s silky pretty face.” – N. Nose
70. “White cherry blossom behold the joy of spring, as white cherry blossom blooms, for it will be over soon.” – Christopher Tye
If you visit Amsterdam, particularly Amsterdamse Bos, you’ll find 400 individually named cherry trees there! Those are a donation from the Japan Women’s club that celebrates the bond of these nations.
71. “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
72. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
73. “I recall the months and years I spent as the intimate of someone whose affections have now faded like cherry blossoms scattering even before a wind blew.” – Yoshida Kenko
74. “In the cherry blossom’s shade there’s no such thing as a stranger.” – Kobayashi Issa
75. “What a strange thing! To be alive beneath cherry blossoms.” – Kobayashi Issa
76. “Tears slid; tears fell; tears, like diamonds, collecting powder in the ruts of her cherry blossom cheeks.” — Virginia Woolf
See also: List Of 140 Eye-opening Diamond Quotes To Check Out
77. “The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.” – Matsuo Basho
78. “It may just be because I get homesick, but I have concluded Washington’s cherry blossoms are just plain overrated.” – Newt Gingrich
79. “Cherry trees will blossom every year; but I’ll disappear for good, one of these days.” — Philip Whalen
80. “If the cherry trees had to wait for understanding, they’d never blossom.” — Marty Rubin
Read next: 130 Beautiful Short Flower Quotes To Add Colors To Your Day