Quotes & Sayings About Tea Ceremony

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

He is a monk. On his card it says INNER PEACE CENTER. I will go there in February for a tea ceremony. Does he actually know more than I do about inner peace? If he met my relatives, would he have a nervous breakdown? What about his relatives? Do they drive him nuts? The truth is everybody gets on everybody's nerves. — Maira Kalman

Wabi means spare, impoverished; simple and functional. It connotes a transcendence of fad and fashion. The spirit of wabi imbues all the Zen arts, from calligraphy to karate, from the tea ceremony to Zen archery. — Shunryu Suzuki

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. that thing you had to force yourself to do
the actual act of writing
turns out to be the best part. it's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. — Anne Lamott

Archery, fencing, spear fighting, all of the martial arts, tea ceremony, flower arranging ... in all of these, correct breathing, correct balance, and correct stillness help to remake the individual. The basic aim is always the same: by tirelessly practicing a given skill, the student finally sheds the ego with its fears, worldly ambitions, and reliance on objective scrutiny - sheds it so completely that he becomes the instrument of a deeper power, from which mastery falls instinctively, without further effort on his part, like a ripe fruit. — Karlfried Graf Durckheim

Japanese tea ceremony; a way of honoring oneself by putting another's needs first, the joy that could be found in intimate service ... A conversation we'd had one night on the way home from a movie. I remember that night he'd put toothpaste on my brush before his own, then bowed, I smiled, but I'd understood too that such small gifts were one seed that blossomed in two hearts. — Elizabeth Berg

Tea has nothing to do with being hungry," said Nimrod. "For Englishmen, it is like a canonical hour. And almost as much of an important ritual as the tea ceremony in Japan. Except for one thing. With tea, in Japan, recognition is given that every human encounter is a singular occasion which can, and will, never recur again exactly. Thus every aspect of tea must be savored for what it gives the participants. But in England, the significance occurs in the fact that teas is always the same, and will always recur again and again, exactly . For how is the endurance of a great civilization to be measured? — P.B. Kerr

Afternoon tea needn't stand on ceremony. Anything that becomes more important than sweet fellowship, whether lace or linen or the china itself, is pretense. How much more we enjoy life when the pretenses are discarded! — Paul F. Kortepeter

If you pour a cup of tea, you are aware of extending your arm and touching your hand to the teapot, lifting it and pouring the water. Finally the water touches your teacup and fills it, and you stop pouring and put the teapot down precisely, as in the Japanese tea ceremony. You become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and can thus have tremendous beauty and dignity. — Chogyam Trungpa

Mapping out dozens of deeply focused trips around the world has convinced me that preparation no more spoils the chance for spontaneity and serendipity than discipline ruins the opportunity for genuine self-expression in sports, acting, or the tea ceremony. — Phil Cousineau

We're supposed to strive for harmony, and that's what the art of tea is supposed to accomplish ... but harmony is very, very difficult to achieve in this country. Tea ceremony is powerless. But it's also not such a bad thing either. You should enjoy it while you can. — Koushun Takami

Tea ceremony is a way of worshipping the beautiful and the simple. All one's efforts are concentrated on trying to achieve perfection through the imperfect gestures of daily life. Its beauty consists in the respect with which it is performed. If a mere cup of tea can bring us closer to God, we should watch out for all the other dozens of opportunities that each ordinary day offers us. — Paulo Coelho

In Japan, you can learn how to make a bunch of flowers. This is an art. Tea ceremony, it's an art. — Carine Roitfeld

Ayahuasca is a brew that's made from the vine, which is the hallucinogenic element. And then there's also this leaf from a bush. And the vine is supposed to be the masculine and the bush is supposed to be the feminine, and this female shaman did a tea drinking ceremony with us, where we drank Wyoosa. And the intention was to go and find pieces of your soul that were missing and bring them back to your body so you could live more fully with yourself and it's called soul retrieval. — Larkin Grimm

Husbands, too,
bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic calmness. Wives,
again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so far from grieving
in the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds to render it as
becoming and attractive as possible. It was observable, too, that
ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during the
ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached
home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over. — Charles Dickens

You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself. — Anne Lamott

In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe. — Okakura Kakuzo

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do
the actual act of writing
turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. — Anne Lamott

Gun stripping is the tea ceremony of America. — Steve Aylett

Japanese tea ceremony, — Sheryl Berk

Dealmaking is to movie people what the tea ceremony is to the Japanese. They are very, very serious about it. — Nicolas Kent

The art of tea, whichever way you drink it, or whichever country you are from, has one underlining thread for all of us. It is the cultivation of yourself as you follow the ceremony of preparing your tea, the way in which you make your tea, how and where you drink it, and with whom. Making a cup of tea creates a space for just being. — Nicola Salter

What silliness that we must consider the proper order of milk and tea when pouring a cup."
Callie swallowed back a laugh. "I suppose you do not place much stock in such ceremony in Venice?"
"No. It is liquid. It is warm. It is not coffee. Why worry?" Juliana's smile flashed, showing a dimple in her cheek.
"Why indeed?" Callie said, wondering, fleetingly, if Juliana's brothers had such an endearing trait.
"Do not be concerned," Juliana held up a hand dramatically. "I shall endeavor to remember tea first, milk second. I should hate to cause another war between Britain and the Continent."
Callie laughed, accepting a cup of perfectly poured tea from the younger woman. "I am certain that Parliament will thank you for your diplomacy. — Sarah MacLean

Tea drinking is a liturgy of comfort, and we partake of it everywhere in the world. It's a ceremony of simplicity, nourishment for both the nomads in foreign teahouses and homebodies in their beds. — Tsh Oxenreider

The Way of Tea lies in studying the ceremony, in understanding the principles, and in grasping the reality of things. These are its three rules. — Hosokawa Tadaoki

It was observable, too, that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during the ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over. All — Charles Dickens

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? — Muriel Barbery

The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible. — Lafcadio Hearn