Tea Quotes, Poems, Verses & Musings
Submitted for your enjoyment by Ron Campbell,
Owner of Merkaba
Back to Hot Tea Guide

"A little tea, one leaf I did not steal.
For guiltless bloodsped I to God appeal.
Put tea in one scale, human blood in t'other,
And think what 'tis to slay a harmless brother."
- Robert Trotman (1765)

"A wave of rare incense is wafted from the tea-room; it is the summons which bids the guests to enter. One by one they advance and take their places. In the tokonoma hangs a kakemono—a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things. The singing kettle. . . sounds like some cicada pouring forth his woes to departing summer."
-Okakura Kakuzo,Book of Tea (1906) Describing the last Cha-no-yu by Rikiu, a great tea master

"Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups on my table."
- Tang Dynasty

"As long as it is hot, wet and goes down the right way, it's fine with me."
-Sarah Fergerson, The Dutchess of York, On Tea

"Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one."
-Ancient Chinese Proverb

"Come along inside... We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place."
- The Wind in the Willows

"Come and share a pot of tea, My home is warm and my friendship's free."
- Emilie Barnes

"Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage. "
- Catherine Douzel

"Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth. "
- Alexander Puskin

"Enjoy life sip by sip not gulp by gulp."
- The Minister of Leaves

"From a room beyond came the whistle of a teakettle. 'Now, you really must join me. I've some marvelous Darjeeling, and some delicious petite fours a friend of mine gave me for Christmas.' "
- Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief

Have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,
have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,
Halleluja, halleluja, halleluja, Rosie Lea
Halleluja, halleluja, halleluja, Rosie Lea
-"Have a Cuppa Tea," The Kinks

"He traces the steam engine alway back to the tea kettle."
-Benjamin Disraeli

"I always fear that creation will expire before tea-time."
- Rev. Sydney Smith

"I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning."
- Samuel Johnson

"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. "
-Lu tung

"If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated; it will cool you; if you are depresses, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you. "
- William Gladstone

"Immortals, hear, said Jove, and cease to jar!
Tea must succeed to Wine as Peace to War.
Nor by the grape let Man be set at odds,
But share in Tea, the Nectar of the Gods."
-Peter Antine Motteaux, A Poem Upon Tea

"It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops."
- Ernest Bramah (1868-1942), The wallet of Kai Lung.

"Kissing is like drinking tea through a tea-strainer; you’re always thirsty afterwards."
-Old Chinese saying

"Look here, Steward, If this is coffee, I want tea; but if this is tea, then I wish for coffee."
-Punch, 1902, vol cxxiii (originally attributed to Abraham Lincoln, c. 1863)

"Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. "
- Henry Fielding

"Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."
- Okakura Kakuzo, Book of Tea (1906)

“My experience...convinced me that tea was better than brandy, and during the last six months in Africa I took no brandy, even when sick taking tea instead.”
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) Letter, 1912

"Remember the tea kettle - it is always up to its neck in hot water, yet it still sings!"
- Unknown

"Tea- the cups that cheer but not inebriate. "
- William Cowper

"Tea had come as a deliverer to a land that called for deliverance; a land of beef and ale, of heavy eating and abundant drunkenness; of gray skies and harsh winds; of strong nerved , stout-purposed, slow-thinking men and women. Above all, a land of sheltered homes and warm firesides - firesides that were waiting - waiting, for the bubbling kettle and the fragrant breath of tea."
- Agnes Reppiler

"Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world."
- Tien Yiheng

"Thank God for Tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea. "
- Rev. Sydney Smith

"That excellent and by all Physitians approved China Drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay, alias Tea, is sold at the Sultaness Head, a cophee-house in Sweeti Rents."
- London weekly Mercurius Politicus of the September 1658, The first published tea advertisement.

"The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency."
- Susan Allen Toth, England For All Seasons

"The best quality tea must have the creases like the leather boots of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like earth newly swept by rain."
- Lu Yu

"The first cup moistens my lips and throat.
The second shatters my loneliness.
The third causes the wrongs of life to fade gently from my recollection.
The fourth purifies my soul.
The fifth lifts me to the realms of the unwinking gods."
- Chinese mystic Tang Dynasty

"The soil.
The elevation.
The climate.
The sunshine.
The rain.
The tea.
Body.
Mind.
Equanimity.
Harmony.
Water.
Tea."
- The Minister of Leaves

"The waters in the rebel bay
Have kept the tea leaf savor
Our old north-enders in the their spray
Still taste a Hyson flavor
And freedom's teacup still overflows with ever-fresh libations
To cheat of slumber all her foes
And cheer the wakening nations!"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ballad of the Boston Tea Party

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
- Henry James

“There are those who love to get dirty
and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
beer after work.
And those who stay clean,
just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
and juice at night.
There are those who do both,
they drink tea.”
- Gary Snyder, Left out in the Rain

"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea"
- T.S. Eliot

"We had a kettle; we let it leak: Our not repairing made it worse. We haven't had any tea for a week... The bottom is out of the Universe".
- Rudyard Kipling (1865 1936)

"While there’s tea there’s hope."
- Sir Arthur Pinero

"Women are like tea bags. They do not know how strong they are until they get into hot water."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Back to Hot Tea Guide

Ron Campbell and his wife Kathy own and operate Merkaba, which features a wide variety of teas and tea items, and gifts for all your spiritual and cultural needs. Their teas come from all over the world and include organic herbal teas, healing teas, Yerba Mate, green teas, black teas, oolong, white teas, pu-erh, flavored tisanes, chai teas, flavored and blended teas. You'll find all kinds of tea products including filters, thermometers, tea bag squeezers, tea cozies, gourds, tea pots and tea sets, mugs and cups, mesh tea infusers, bombilla and even coffee and tea scoops. For more information about Merkaba's retail shop in Idyllwild, CA, or online store visit: http://www.southwestblend.com/merkaba/index.htm