Teapot Quotes & Sayings

It is always best when discussing serious matters to do so around a teapot. — Gordon Dahlquist

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. — Bruce Lee

It was a father, one hand resting teapot-style on his hip, and the other - what would be the spout - formed into a fist. — David Sedaris

Just let me catch my breath, Red Macalister, and think. You've tipped my teapot handle over spout. — Debra Holland

A great idea should always be left to steep like loose tea leaves in a teapot for a while to make sure that the tea will be strong enough and that the idea truly is a great one. — Phoebe Stone

I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion. — Barbara Pym

That Kami Glass, people must say as she went by. About as sexy as a teapot. — Sarah Rees Brennan

To my room. Sheriff John Moultrie blew through his teeth and pursed lips, making a sound more akin to a steaming teapot than a whistle. The tune was "On the Road to Alabam'," a melody he'd picked up from watching gangs of gandy dancers as a child; he'd forgotten the words, but the ditty remained part of his grain. — Nancy E. Turner

As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbrit around the planet Pluto. We can't disprove it. But that doesn't mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn't. — Richard Dawkins

It'd be fun, you know. Just once. To wake up Christmas morning with snow on the ground and stockings full of presents that no one had to steal and a house that's really home." She reclaimed the teapot and slowly slipped back into the con. "That would be nice. Maybe, someday, we'll steal that." On — Ally Carter

He watched the young actress playing the central part of a wife who mistakenly believes her husband has wronged her. She was overly trained in the teapot school of acting, striking expressive poses and attitudes as the mood of the story demanded. — Stephen Harrigan

Tea. He watched her while she made it, made it, of course, all wrong: the water not on the boil, the teapot unheated, too few leaves. She said, I never quite understand why English people like teas so. — Graham Greene

When women set their hearts on anything it is a known fact that they seldom fail to accomplish it. ~Mrs. podgers' Teapot — Kelly O'Connor McNees

The shallow teapot does the most spouting, and boils dry most quickly! — Elizabeth Foreman Lewis

Teapot Dome involved the conservation of the oil resources of the United States, especially those situated upon the public lands. — George William Norris

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life! — Lewis Carroll

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury ... ' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night. — Barbara Pym

Eleanor had bargained for their wedding present, the dragon-spouted teapot worth thousands and the cups to match, gold-leafed, scaly. — Kate Walbert

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl. — Gerald Durrell

When it comes to the teapot tempest that is the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio, the real controversy isn't about politics or regulations. It's about journalism and the weak standards employed to manufacture the scandal du jour. — Kurt Eichenwald

It was like a scene straight out of Beauty and the Beast. I kept waiting for a teapot to start singing. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

He's at the chocolate teapot end of the competency scale. — Nick Hornby

She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O'Connor and leaned against his leg.
Mr. O'Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. "I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook."
Silence lifted her chin. "You're a pirate, Mr. O'Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet."
He gave her an ironic look. "Aye, amazin', isn't it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded." He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. "And me dog smells like a whorehouse."
Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. "The only soap we could find was rose scented. — Elizabeth Hoyt

There was a proud Teapot, proud of being made of porcelain, proud of its long spout and its broad handle. It had something in front of it and behind it; the spout was in front, and the handle behind, and that was what it talked about. But it didn't mention its lid, for it was cracked and it was riveted and full of defects, and we don't talk about our defects - other people do that. The cups, the cream pitcher, the sugar bowl - in fact, the whole tea service - thought much more about the defects in the lid and talked more about it than about the sound handle and the distinguished spout. The Teapot knew this. — Hans Christian Andersen

She was very ugly - the ugliest person you ever saw in your life! Her hair was scraped into a bun, sticking straight out at the back of her head like a teapot handle; and her face was round and wrinkly, and she had eyes like two little black boot-buttons. And her nose! - she had a nose like two potatoes. She wore a rusty black dress right up to the top of her neck and right down to her button boots, and a rusty black jacket and a rusty black bonnet, all trimmed with trembly black jet, with her teapot-handled of a bun sticky out at the back. And she carried a small brown case and a large black stick, and she had a very fierce expression indeed on her wrinkly, round, brown face.
But what you noticed most of all was that she had one huge front Tooth, sticking right out like a tombstone over her lower lip. You never, in the whole of your life, ever saw such a Tooth! — Christianna Brand

Normally I will have five or six cups of tea a day, and if I can have them poured from a teapot, then all the better. I think tea tastes so much nicer from a pot. — Phyllis Logan

Carefully, I arrange the teapot, the little white cup, and the sugar bowl before me like an army. Defense? Or attack? — Cat Hellisen

There was nothing she valued more than a cool and clear head, and Michael had managed to steal that from her with a single kiss.
And then he'd done more.
So much more.
She was never going to be the same.
She was never going to be /sane/.
'You look distressed,' he said.
She wanted to strangle him.
He cocked his head and smiled.
She wanted to kiss him.
He held up the teapot. 'More?'
God, yes, and that was the problem. — Julia Quinn

Find yourself a cup of tea, the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. — Hector Hugh Munro

Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst
Heaven bless the mark! — Washington Irving

The crushed
teapot
in
the rubbish
of the
bulldozed
house
will sing
in your
ears
forever. — Alice Walker

Now, there is no harm in a teapot, even if it contains tea, if it is let alone. — Brigham Young

Jimmy: You'll end up like one of those chocolate merengues my wife is so fond of [Alison starts banging jars] ... sweet and sticky on the outside, and sink your teeth in it [savouring every word]-inside, all white, messy and disgusting. [offering teapot sweetly to Helena] Milk? — John Osborne

One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home? — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Could you say that your business had expanded if it had gone from owning one teapot to two? Somehow she thought that Dr. Profit would answer both those questions with a shake of his head. Of course, she herself had expanded in girth since the agency was founded, but she did not think that such a form of growth was what the author of the article had in mind. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

When Mrs. Harker came in to see me this afternoon she wasn't the same. It was like tea after the teapot has been watered. — Bram Stoker

showed where the ancient pewter teapot had leaked. At the other end was a scattering of crumbs left by the — Winston Graham

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence. — Richard Dawkins

The lamps were lit, and a good fire crackled in the great stone fireplace. There was a discreet chink of china, the brightness of silver teapot and muffin cover, the comforting smell mingled of steaming hot water, toast and a little sweet tobacco. — Susan Hill

She put on the teapot and laid a couple of Oreos on a plate for Danny in case he decided to come up while she was lying down. — Stephen King

What I mean is, if you're absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence, the Cat's Friend, ready for anything. — P.G. Wodehouse

A writer's mind is like a teapot. The words build up in your head until you just gotta let 'em out. — Max Hawthorne

I like to personalise my dressing room, have a cover for the bed and, if it is a long run, a few cushions and a teapot - a little pot for one. — Lesley Manville

Bryn was pretty sure Jaxon would rather do a rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot" while wearing nothing but black socks and a Viking helmet than dance with her. — Chris Cannon

Disciples and devotees ... what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea! — Wei Wu Wei

One of the shining moments of my day is that when, having returned a little weary from an afternoon walk, I exchange boots for slippers, out-of-doors coat for easy, familiar, shabby jacket, and, in my deep, soft-elbowed chair, await the tea-tray ... [H]ow delicious is the soft yet penetrating odour which floats into my study, with the appearance of the teapot! ... What a glow does it bring after a walk in chilly rain! — George Gissing

Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and held it out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla, who feigned to be contemptuously filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene out of the corner of her eye with a rather interested air.
Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty it was
a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most fashinable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves
they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon. — L.M. Montgomery

Tea-
The sweetness of love,
The fragrance of flowers,
The comfort of a friend,
The warmth of a hug
-Such great delight gingerly poured from a single pink teapot. — Zakiyya Rosebelle

through her notes now." She pointed at a teapot — James Stevens

Ephraim lifted the top of the trunk. Neatly stacked were mementoes from what seemed like hundreds of journeys. Right on top was an etching of the Eiffel tower next to an African mask that looked at him with surprised eyes. He reached in a little deeper and unearthed a small teapot decorated with blue drawings just like the kind his grandmother collected and kept in a locked china cabinet. — Megan Frazer Blakemore

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

From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I've been told where I must go and who I must be. I've been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I've been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is *my* dream. *I'll* decide where it goes from here. — Alice Kingsley

There was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe
the only lady private detective in Botwana
brewed tea. And three mugs
one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? — Alexander McCall Smith

It goes without saying that in order for me to buy a teapot at the Oneida, Ltd., outlet store at the Sherrill Shopping Plaza, the second coming of Jesus Christ had to have taken place in the year 70 A.D. To the Oneida Community, 70 A.D., the year the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, marks the beginning of the New Jerusalem. Which means we've all been living in heaven on earth for nearly two thousand years. Everyone knows there is no marriage in heaven (though one suspects there's no shortage of it in hell). So, the Oneidans said, we're here in heaven, already saved and perfect in the eyes of God, so let's move upstate and sleep around. (I'm paraphrasing.) — Sarah Vowell

Presently, out from the wrappings came a teapot, which caused her to clasp her hands with delight, for it was made in the likeness of a plump little Chinaman ... Two pretty cups with covers, and a fine scarlet tray, completed the set, and made one long to have a "dish of tea," even in Chinese style, without cream or sugar. — Louisa May Alcott

The teapot takes in water and gives out tea. So the human individual takes in anything you give him and promptly transforms it; he is ready to give you out again his own reactions - first, in thought and emotion, then in voice or action. — Louis MacNeice

The cozy fire is bright and gay, The merry kettle boils away and hums a cheerful song. I sing the saucer and the cup; Pray, Mary, fill the teapot up, And do not make it strong — Barry Pain

Even when I'm writing animation, I think of them as real people. I think of them as completely three-dimensional beings, even if it's a talking teapot. I don't think of them as one-dimensional drawn characters running around. Maybe that's why, to me, there's really no difference in writing the two - animation versus live action. — Linda Woolverton

The wise man is he who is not surprised when he finds stale tea in a beautiful teapot! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

These things happen in threes,' said Milly in her way of uttering bits of folk-wisdom; she was spooning tea into the heated teapot. She always mixed tea with maxims. — Muriel Spark

If you have one teapot And can brew your tea in it That will do quite well. How much does he lack himself Who must have a lot of things? — Sen No Rikyu

What part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! Why myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! [ ... ] Nature meant very kindly by women when she made the tea plant; and with a little thought, what series of pictures and groups of the fancy may conjure up and assemble round the teapot and cup. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Mason. Darling. Do I have to flutter my eyelashes all morning to get you to pass the teapot down this way or am I going to have to offer you a blow job? Some of us are dehydrating over here. — Rolf And Ranger

I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I talk about any number of things on my Facebook space. Politics. Current events. The writing life. The latest tempests in a teapot centering on fandom. Daily doings from my own life. My cats, for crying out loud. Flights of humorous fantasy. Books, both those I've read and those I've written. Movies. And occasionally, TV shows. — Adam-Troy Castro

(The subject of Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, I realize, is a digression away from the Oneida Community, and yet, I do feel compelled, indeed almost conspiracy theoretically bound to mention that one of the reasons the Oneida Community broke up and turned itself into a corporate teapot factory is that a faction within the group, led by a lawyer named James William Towner, was miffed that the community's most esteemed elders were bogarting the teenage virgins and left in a huff for none other than Orange County, California, where Towner helped organize the Orange County government, became a judge, and picked the spot where the Santa Ana courthouse would be built, a courthouse where, it is reasonable to assume, Peter Gallagher's attorney on The O.C. might defend his clients.) — Sarah Vowell

Outside of the chair, the teapot is the most ubiquitous and important design element in the domestic environment and almost everyone who has tackled the world of design has ended up designing one. — David McFadden

There seemed to be so many things that I needed, but I held myself in check and purchased only essentials - with the exception of one extravagance. I had determined that I would drink my tea like a lady, even in a log house; so I purchased a teapot and two cups and saucers of fine china. I felt somehow Mama's mind would be much more at ease about me if she knew that I was having my tea in the proper fashion. After all, civilization could not be too far away from Pine Springs if I had such amenities! — Janette Oke

Keep quiet. Don't panic. Never tell anyone the truth. She'd lived with their rules for twelve years, and for what? So that she might one day be so lucky as to be forgotten entirely. The memory of Minerva Lane - of who she'd been, what she'd done - felt like a hot coal covered in cold ashes. It smoldered on long after the fire had been doused. Sometimes, all that heat rose up in her until she felt the need to shriek like a teapot. Until she wanted to burn the mousy shreds of her tattered personality. It rose up in her now, that fiery rebellion. The part of her that was still Minerva - the part that hadn't been ground to smoothness - whispered temptation in her ear. You don't need to keep quiet. You need a strategy. — Courtney Milan

I told her that my happy yellow teapot has a kinky backstory involving a nineteenth-century vegetarian sex cult in upstate New York whose members lived for three decades as self-proclaimed "Bible communists" before incorporating into the biggest supplier of dinnerware to the American food-service industry, not to mention harboring their most infamous resident, an irritating young maniac who, years after he moved away, was hanged for assassinating President Garfield. — Sarah Vowell

Whitman himself "accepted" a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through the city and notes the shattered skull of the suicide, the "grey sick faces of onanists," etc., etc. But unquestionably our own age, at any rate in Western Europe, is less healthy and less hopeful than the age in which Whitman was writing. Unlike Whitman, we live in a shrinking world. The "democratic vistas" have ended in barbed wire. There is less feeling of creation and growth, less and less emphasis on the cradle, endlessly rocking, more and more emphasis on the teapot, endlessly stewing. To accept civilisation as it is practically means accepting decay. It has ceased to be a strenuous attitude and become a passive attitude - even "decadent," if that word means anything. — George Orwell

I grew up being a huge fan of Bruce Lee, and this quote always stuck out to me. He said, "Water can flow, or it can crash. If you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot." It always made sense to me to adapt the flow and roll with whatever the situation is and to not think about it too much and get caught up in it. It works easier for me that way. — Gary Clark Jr.

Mrs. Hilly had gone for the Swindon/Szechuan fusion menu and had steak and chips dim sum followed by hot Fanta in a teapot. — Jasper Fforde

Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I must confess that I do not understand why things are so arranged, that women seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot: either their hands are so constructed, or else our noses are good for nothing else. — Nikolai Gogol

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying Wait. — Douglas Adams

I heard a screeching like steam from a teapot, and realized it was me. — David Wong

The real wages of potters are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour the morning tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate. To be this involved in the daily lives of people who appreciate and admire your work enough to buy it must bring deep reassurance. It is a kind of immortality you can enjoy while still living.
The same goes for the woodworker. You are part of the community. — Roger Deakin

water is fearless,you put water into a cup,it becomes the cup ,you put water into a teapot it becomes the teapot,water can flow drip ,creap,or crash! — Bruce Lee

As the dragon charged it released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad. — Heywood Broun

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend. — Bruce Lee

Chapter 15 A Tempest in the School Teapot — L.M. Montgomery

She asked if she could sleep in my bed that night and I said yes and we went upstairs and lay close together in the narrow bed and I wondered if maybe she missed her mother, and then around halfway through the night Edmond came in saying he was lonely and he lay down too only facing in the other direction since it was the only way he could fit, and then around sunrise Isaac wandered in too wondering where everyone had gone and when he saw us he just smiled a little and went down to the kitchen and brought up the big brown teapot and some mugs on a tray and we all piled together on the bed on top of each other like puppies and drank our tea while the sun streamed in thick and yellow through the window. And — Meg Rosoff

I just don't understand how you can not be concerned about your appearance. From time to time I'm vilified as the person who cares about the look of a teapot - and it's not that I believe my taste is superior, I just can not believe that other people don't care. — Stephen Bayley

Travelers are fantasists, conjurers, seers - and what they finally discover is that every round object everywhere is a crystal ball: stone, teapot, the marvelous globe of the human eye. — Cynthia Ozick

The very sight of a teapot puts a smile on the face of most people. One cannot help but think of more serene and genteel times. From a whimsical child's teapot to an elegant English Teapot, to collectible teapots that adorn some homes, they are a subtle reminder of all that is good in this world. — Barbara Roberts

Originally I planned on starting a teapot collection. I really like them. — Billy Dee Williams

Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot? — Charles Dickens

You may not realize it but you're seeking the silence in your soul, a plea where you go to find the best of yourself. Learning a simple and beautiful skill, like choosing a teapot, that's seeking that silence, creating rituals where that silence may be found and nurtured. As long as you have that place, you'll never lose yourself, who you are, what you want. But you have to remember to keep bringing flowers into your meadow, always one at a time, to appreciate each blossom, to honor its contribution to your character. It helps make you into the person you were meant to be. — Joey W. Hill

Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding, the man General Leonard Wood lost the presidency to is quoted as saying
:
"I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it."

Warren G. Harding was born on November 2, 1865. A Republican, he became the popular 29th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1921 until his death in 1923. Later, Harding was rated among the worst presidents due to scandals while in office; including the Teapot Dome scandal. He was also considered a lady's man and revelations of his affair with Nan Britton, one of his mistresses, undermined his reputation at a time when having an affair was normally accepted. — Hank Bracker

Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love. — Patti Smith

She said being inside a language was like being in a person's house - after a while you came to see why the teapot was where it was. — Ian Frazier

I am not absolutely positive there is no god. Only in the sense that I'm not absolutely positive there is no large china teapot in orbit in the solar system. — Richard Dawkins

I hurl the glass teapot to the ground.
we both stare at it, stunned.
"it was supposed to break," I explain after a pause, " and that was going to signify that yes, I would throw something away . If I knew it wasn't right for me. — Sophie Kinsella

Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction? — Virginia Woolf

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. — Bertrand Russell

When all is complete deep in the teapot, when tea, mint, and sugar have completely diffused throughout the water, coloring and saturating it ... then a glass will be filled and poured back into the mixture, blending it further. The comes waiting. Motionless waiting. Finally, from high up, like some green cataract whose sight and sound mesmerize, the tea will once again cascade into a glass. Now it can be drunk, dreamily, forehead bowed, fingers held wide away from the scalding glass. — Simonne Jacquemard

Alberto Alessi had asked a dozen architects to design a sterling silver tea service - with a teapot, a coffee pot, sugar, creamer, a spoon, and a tray. Our brief was that it didn't matter if it didn't work and cost wasn't the issue. It was a promotional project, not a commercial enterprise, and was going to be showcased in museums. And the coffee and tea piazza, as mine was called, received a great response. It was wonderful to walk into the Whitney museum and see all these objects on the first floor. — Michael Graves

I had a little friend, a peasant boy, who was younger than me. I was about ten. One day I saw that my friend had put a bowl, a cup, a teapot and a square milk carton on the edge of a well, had filled them all with water, and was looking at them attentively. '"What are you doing?" I asked him. And he answered me with a question in turn. '"What shape is water?" '"Water doesn't have any shape!" I said, laughing. "It takes the shape you give it."' At — Andrea Camilleri