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International Tea Day & World Day for Cultural Diversity
Those who love tea have always written about it - philosophers, poets, priests, and presidents.
"Tea is quiet and our thirst for tea is never far from our craving for beauty."
- James Norwood Pratt
"There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life."
- Lin Yutang
"If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are excited, it will calm you."
- William Gladstone
"Tea... is a religion of the art of life."
- Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea
"A cup of tea is a cup of peace."
- Sen no Rikyu
"Tea is the elixir of life."
- Eisai, Japanese Zen priest
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."
- C.S. Lewis
"Tea is an act complete in its simplicity."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"In the taste of a single cup of tea you will eventually discover the truth of all the ten thousand forms in the universe."
- attributed to Kyongbong Sunim
"Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage."
- Kakuzo Okakura
"Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage."
- Catherine Douzel
"Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept."
- Frances Hardinge
"Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one."
- Chinese proverb
"Water is the mother of tea, a teapot its father, and fire the teacher."
- Chinese proverb
"A man without tea in him is incapable of understanding truth and beauty."
- Japanese proverb
"Tea is wealth itself, because there is nothing that cannot be lost, no problem that will not disappear, no burden that will not float away, between the first sip and the last."
- The Minister of Leaves
"The spirit of the tea beverage is one of peace, comfort and refinement."
- Arthur Gray
"Where there's tea there's hope."
- Arthur Wing Pinero
"Tea time is a chance to slow down, pull back and appreciate our surroundings."
- Letitia Baldrige
In 1906, Kakuzo Okakura wrote The Book of Tea, introducing Japanese tea culture to the West. His words still resonate:
"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."