Kettle Tea Quotes & Sayings

A man who wishes to make his way in life could do no better than go through the world with a boiling tea-kettle in his hand. — Sydney Smith

A high-pitched sound, like steam escaping from a kettle whistles through the dark room. But nobody's making tea. We both turn toward the source of the eerie noise.
A weak stream of unearthly light seeps through the window near the corner of the room and pours onto the floor. Its consistency seems to lie somewhere between a liquid and a solid, like mercury, only blue. Out of the gleaming, wobbly puddle, a phosphorescent vapor rises up. The ghost we thought was Daniel materializes and looms over us for two seconds before he lunges and wraps his hands around Wyatt's neck. — Alyson Larrabee

The tea-kettle is as much an English institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book ... — Catharine Beecher

I hate to admit this but I don't even know how to make a cup of tea or coffee. I can boil a kettle for a pot noodle and I've been known to warm up some food in the microwave. — Michael Owen

I once got a postcard from a French poet who wrote - "you don't know me but I'm always very grumpy when I get up in morning. But when I get up now I put the tea kettle on, and when it starts to sing it makes me smile - goddamn you!" That's what happened when we first designed it - we got a lot of mail. — Michael Graves

If you ask Zen people they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. — Rajneesh

I. At Tea
THE kettle descants in a cosy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husband's face,
And then in her guest's, and shows in her own
Her sense that she fills an envied place;
And the visiting lady is all abloom,
And says there was never so sweet a room.
And the happy young housewife does not know
That the woman beside her was his first choice,
Till the fates ordained it could not be so ...
Betraying nothing in look or voice
The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,
And he throws her a stray glance yearningly. — Thomas Hardy

Alternative Anthem.


Put the kettle on
Put the kettle on
It is the British answer
to Armageddon.

Never mind taxes rise
Never mind trains are late
One thing you can be sure of
and that's the kettle, mate.

It's not whether you lose
It's not whether you win
It's whether or not
you've plugged the kettle in.

May the kettle ever hiss
May the kettle ever steam
It is the engine
that drives our nation's dream.

Long live the kettle
that rules over us
May it be limescale free
and may it never rust.

Sing it on the beaches
Sing it from the housetops
The sun may set on empire
but the kettle never stops. — John Agard

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 Repplier

He fell ass over tea Kettle — C.E. Murphy

Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things. Whether it's a song, a stranger, a mountain, a tea kettle, an article, a sentence, a footstep -feel it all. Look around you. All of this is for you. Take it and have gratitude. Give it and feel love. — Zooey Deschanel

It was precisely midnight when he stepped through the door. Taylor had said he wanted everyone in the Incident Room an hour before first light the next day, but Perez wasn't ready for sleep. As he switched on the kettle to make tea, he remembered he hadn't eaten since lunchtime and stuck sliced bread under the grill, fished margarine and marmalade from the fridge. He'd have breakfast now, save time in the morning. — Ann Cleeves

The order never varies. Two slices of bread-and-butter each, and China tea. What a hide-bound couple we must seem, clinging to custom because we did so in England. Here, on this clean balcony, white and impersonal with centuries of sun, I think of half-past-four at Manderley, and the table drawn before the library fire. The door flung open, punctual to the minute, and the performance, never-varying, of the laying of the tea, the silver tray, the kettle, the snowy cloth. — Daphne Du Maurier

The tea kettle whistled, and Melissa poured it over the tea at the bottom of the glass pot. While it steeped, Melissa opened the back door to her favorite sight in her corner of the world - her herb and butterfly garden. Blue and purple lupine, shocking pink four o'clocks, orange poppies, and sunny-yellow damiana greeted her, still shaded by the fig tree on the east side of the garden. — Leslie Leigh

I respect your right to worship Satan, or to worship a tea kettle, or to be a NIMBY, or to be an asshole. There's no law against being an asshole. — Chicken John

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

It is the way in which the Dark returns, Harrier. I will explain, if you like."
"Oh, no," Harrier said. "I'd much rather not know a thing about what we're facing. Let me get dressed first."
A few minutes later Harrier came back, dressed for the day. He made another cup of hot cordial for Tiercel, refilled the kettle and started the water brewing for tea, and set some dried fruit to soak for griddle-cakes. "Okay. Now. Ruin my day," he invited. — Mercedes Lackey

A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning. — Samuel Johnson

The smoke rolls along the low ceiling and pours up into the night - a reverse waterfall - like when the kettle boils beneath the plate cupboard. — Joe Dunthorne

She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked - and then she would be afraid,
Even with a lamp, to go about the house
And lock the windows; and as night wore on
Toward morning, if a dog howled, or a mouse
Squeaked in the floor, long after it was gone
Her flesh would sit awry on her. By day
She would forget somewhat, and it would seem
A silly thing to go with just this dream
And get a neighbor to come at night and stay.
But it would strike her sometimes, making tea:
_She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company._ — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cup of tea?' Lupin said, looking around for his kettle. 'I was just thinking of making one.'
'All right,' said Harry, awkwardly.
Lupin tapped the kettle with his wand and a blast of steam issued suddenly from the spout.
'Sit down,' said Lupin, taking the lid off a dusty tin. 'I've only got teabags, I'm afraid-but I daresay you've had enough of tea leaves?'
Harry looked at him. Lupin's eyes were twinkling.
'How did you know that?' Harry asked.
'Professor McGonagall told me,' said Lupin, passing Harry a chipped mug of tea. 'You're not worried, are you? — J.K. Rowling

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself
but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.) — Robin McKinley

You put the tea in the kettle and light it. Put your hand on the metal and feel it.. but do you even feel it anymore? — Drake

We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out. — Jerome K. Jerome

The slight pull was all it took to completely unbalance his precarious load and dump the manure - all atop her boots.
"Bloody hell! Look what ye done!" the boy cried ... If ye hadn't come along and pulled me o'er it ne'er would have happened.But now ye'd best clean it up afore Devington or Jeffries comes along."
"Me?" she replied incredulously. "I'm not the clumsy oaf who dumped it. It's not my mess to clean."
"Well, I ain't about to be the last to finish my chores. Devington will have me turning over the reeking dung pit instead of breaking me fast wi' the other chaps."
"That's nothing compared to my boots, you ham-fisted lout!"
"Tweren't me what pulled the wheelbarrow arse over tea kettle, ye wantwit! Go bugger yer mother and lick yer boots clean!"
"I'll box your ears, you brazen-faced little jackanapes! ... — Emery Lee

I went back into the house and had put on the kettle for another cup of tea when my attention was caught by a spider on the kitchen wall. As I drew nearer to look at it, the spider called out, "Hello!" It did not seem at all strange to me that a spider should say hello (any more than it seemed strange to Alice when the White Rabbit spoke). I said, "Hello, yourself," and with this we started a conversation, mostly on rather technical matters of analytic philosophy. Perhaps this direction was suggested by the spider's opening comment: did I think that Bertrand Russell had exploded Frege's paradox? Or perhaps it was its voice - pointed, incisive, and just like Russell's voice (which I had heard on the radio, but also - hilariously - as it had been parodied in Beyond the Fringe).9 D — Oliver Sacks

Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones
the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically. — Rabindranath Tagore

I am certainly intrepid and splendid and sordid and strong; I can see why you'd want me! But I'm afraid I've left the kettle on or whatever it is people say when they're bored. — Catherynne M Valente

There's no 'I' in team. But there is 'tea'. So put the kettle on, — Dave Turner

Like an electric tea-kettle, pornography comes to a boil very fast. — Mason Cooley

Rosalind exploded with a shriek worthy of a tea-kettle. — Emma Clifton

My flat's about half a mile away, and you know what I'd like most of all in the world? I'd like a cup of tea. Come on, let's go and put the kettle on. — Philip Pullman

The tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle - a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat. — Agnes Repplier

The best ideas aren't hidden in shadowy recesses. They're right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. Innovation seldom depends on discovering obscure or subtle elements but in seeing the obvious with fresh eyes. This is easier said than done because nothing is as hard to see as what's right before our eyes. We overlook what we take for granted. Billions of tea drinkers observed the force of steam escaping from water boiling in a kettle before James Watt realized that this vapor could be converted into energy. — Richard Farson

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. — Jerome K. Jerome

The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so selected that no colour or design shall be repeated. If you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular. A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy of black lacquer. In placing a vase of an incense burner on the tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact centre, lest it divide the space into equal halves. The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony in the room. — Okakura Kakuzo

In Mexico we have a trick - add a crystal of salt to the kettle and the tea tastes better, almost English. But after four pots, your kettle's broken. — Gael Garcia Bernal

On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions on it; by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it were spread small covered dishes, a cup and saucer, and a tea-pot; on the bed were new, warm coverings, a curious wadded silk robe, and some books. The little, cold, miserable room seemed changed into Fairyland. It was actually warm and glowing. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea. — Charles Dickens