Tea Quotes

Voted #1Tea Quote at Imperial Tea Garden

From the 1964 classic movie - - Mary Poppins

Mr Dawes Jr: In seventeen hundred & seventy three, An official of this bank unwisely loaned a large sum of money to finance a shipment of tea to the American Colonies... Do you know what happened?

George W. Banks: Yes sir, yes I think I do. As the ship lay in Boston harbor, a party of colonists, dressed as Red Indians, boarded the vessel, behaved rudely, and threw all the tea overboard. This made the tea unsuitable for drinking - - even for Americans!

 

Tea Quote Runner Up

 From the 1968 classic movie - - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (lyrics from P-O-S-H)

This is livin', this is style, this is elegance by the mile. Oh the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me. First cabin and captain's table regal company. Whenever I'm bored I travel abroad but ever so properly. Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh. The hands that hold the scepters, every head that holds a crown. They'll always give their all for me they'll never let me down. I'm on my way to far away tah tah and toodle-oo and fare thee well, and Bon Voyage arrivederci too. O the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me. First cabin and captain's table regal company. Pardon the dust of the upper crust--fetch us a cup of tea

***********************************************************************
Jet Li ( Fearless) (2006)
Tea does not judge itself, people judge the tea

From the book, "Afternoon Tea at Pittock Mansion" Quote by R.Z. Berry
Cook, Cook, drink your tea,
But save some in the pot for me.
We'll watch the tea leaves in our cup
When our drink is all sipped up.
Happiness or fortune great,
What will our future be?

From the Movie Whiskey Tango foxtrot (2016)

Sadiq to Kim : What can I get for you? Some Tea? The new play station?

Tea quotes from Grateful Dead songs (next 6)….Alligator - Lyrics: Robert Hunter, Ron
McKernan (Pigpen) - Music: Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan (Pigpen)
Call for his whiskey, he can call for his tea
Call all he wants to but he can't call me

Don't Ease Me In - Lyrics/Music: Traditional
She brings me coffee, you know she brings me tea
She brings 'bout every damn thing but the jailhouse key

Doin' That Rag - Lyrics: Robert Hunter - Music: Jerry Garcia
Baby baby, pretty young on Tuesday
Old like a rum drinking demon at tea

Easy Wind - Lyrics/Music: Robert Hunter
Gotta find a woman be good to me
Won't hide my liquor try, to serve me tea.

Scarlet Begonias - Lyrics: Robert Hunter - Music: Jerry Garcia
The wind in the willows playing Tea for Two
The sky was yellow and the sun was blue
Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand
Everybody’s playing in the heart of gold band

Spoonful - Lyrics/Music: Willie Dixon (Tea quote from Howlin' Wolf song)
Well it might be a spoonful of coffee
Might be a spoonful of tea
Just a little spoon of your precious love
Good enough for me

waking up by elastica
Make a cup of tea, and put a record on

all nighter by elastica
"Got to get some fags and make some tea"

from monty pythons flying circus (hells grannies sketch), it was on the back of their leather
jackets
"Make tea not war"

-Okakura Kakuzo, 1906
"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."

From Erykah Badu's song "On and On":
"I think I need a cup of tea, the world keeps burnin, Oh what a day, what a day what a day."

Sydney Smith (1771-1845) "Recipe for Salad. p. 383."
Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?-how did it exist? I am glad I was not born
before tea.

From Mary Poppin's song "A Spoonful of Sugar"
"...it changes bread and water into tea and cakes..."

Kevin Spacey from "The Shipping News"
"Tea's a good drink. It'll keep you going."

John Lennon, The Beatles "Good Morning Good Morning"
"It's time for tea and meet the wife"

Eric Idle as Dirk McQuickly in "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash"
"I have had tea...lots of tea...Indian tea...and biscuits."

Lu Tung
"I'm not interested in immortality but only in tea flavour."

From the film "Working Girl" with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith
"What do you want? Tea, coffee, or ... me?"


Colin Blythe (played by Donald Pleasance) - The Great Escape, 1963
"I'm afraid this tea's pathetic. I must have used these wretched leaves about 20 times. It's not that I mind so much. Tea without milk is so uncivilized"

The Police
"Tea in the Sahara, with you."

Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"And I want a tea cozy. I don't know what a tea cozy is, but I want one!"

Jean Luc Picard Captain of The Star Ship "Enterprise"
"Computer:
Tea,
Earl Grey,
Hot."

lyrics from Cravin' Melon (Red Clay Harvest) "Sweet Tea"
"Don't try to offer me anything
What it comes right down to baby
Don't tempt me; I'm where I wanna be
Cause on the eighth day, God made sweet tea
Certain things in life I like to savor
Watchin' clouds and waitin' on the rain
If you ever question my behavior
Just a taste will make you feel the same now."

Author unknown
"Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea."

from R. L. Taylor "A Modern Don Juan"
"Snook: I'm not feeling very much like eating, Bill. I think this constant wet weather's got into my
bones. I find it quite hard work to drag my feet along.
Smith: A nice mug of tea'll soon put you right, Alf. You mustn't go sick - this evening of all evenings! I
tell you what we'll do, Alf. I've got a bottle of really good Scotch in my room. I managed to pick it up! It's been the only bright spot in our stay here. When we go in to supper, we'll pour a double into your mug of tea. Hot tea and whisky is a good mixture when you're feeling under the weather. It's helped to put many a man on his feet again."

Japanese Proverb
"If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty."

Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady.
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as
afternoon tea."

This is taken from our song 'Brown Tea Lady'
"love lost-forlorn
warm tea is gone
help me find a way
help me to remain

(chorus)

part of you and part of tea
without tea,i am lost
candle-lit tears stream into the night
i am a tea pot waiting for night

brown tea
blackened pot
what posseses me now
seeds of my birth

(repeat chorus)

now-used tea bags
awaiting new birth
safe in the pot
and in the earth

you came to me
a soul in flight
you killed my flame
and stole my light"

Above quote was from a pre WW11 advertisement that used to appear in Sydney trams. (I think it
advertised either Green Label or Bushells Tea)

"To beat fatigue you'll all agree, there's nothing like a cup of tea!"

Pussy to Tea
"Pussy cat, pussy cat,
What are you at?
Where are your manners,
You bad little cat?"

"Miou," said the pussy;
"Please, may I stay
To afternoon tea, ma'am,
For once in a way?"

"Pussy cat, pussy cat,
What can I do?
There's no cup and saucer,
There's no tea for you."

"Miou," said the pussy;
"Miou, ma'am," said she.
"I don't need a tea-cup,
I never take tea;
Some milk in a saucer,
Is better for me."

from Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
"If he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea...and turn it on!"

the character Jerry Ledbetter, "Good Neighbors"
"Top off the tea... it lubricates the grey matter."

Okakura Kakuzo The Book of Tea
"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."

Hugo Drax, villian of Moonraker (1979), to James Bond
"You have arrived at a propitious moment, coincident with your country's one indisputable
contribution to Western civilisation - afternoon tea".

Tori Amos
"So I had to get this song together in about, um, 2 hours. And, uh, this boy really pissed me off
because I had a crush on him right, and he'd been making tea for me for 9 months... Hang on, I'm telling a story! And so, the whole thing is, he would sit there and ask me...now if you're making tea for a girl, right, for 9 months, don't you think guys, I mean help me out here, your noodle, I know it can hold a lot of information, right? But don't you think you can remember how many sugars a girl takes in her tea after nine months ...YO."

Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears from the song "Laid So Low"
Chewed the bone down too low
Got fed on tea and sympathy"

"Tea for the Tillerman," song by Cat Stevens
Bring tea for the Tillerman
Steak for the sun
Wine for the women who made the rain come
Seagulls sing your hearts away
'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play

From The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The tea is ready, Dolores," said Ferguson. "See that your mistress has everything she can wish."

The Beatles
Lovely Rita, Meter Maid
May I inquire discreetly?
When are you free to take some tea with me?

Kurt Cobain 'Nirvana'
Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea
I'm anemic royalty.

La Rouchefoucauld wrote in 1784
"Throughout the whole of England the drinking of tea is general. You have it twice a day and though the expense is considerable, the humblest peasant has his tea, just like the rich man".

Douglas Adams~ "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", ©1979
"After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-
shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.
He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but
highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's
metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of
the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this
because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The
Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints
department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star
system."

Daniel Johns~ from silverchair
"There is always a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea."

Lu T'ung
"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea."

Joseph Addison, 1711.
"All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter."

"Tea gives me a headache!"
Pete Puma~The third time Bugs Bunny asks how he'd like his tea, with one "lump" or two.
Pete previously responded, "I have a sweet tooth. Better make it five."

Marlene Dietrich ~ Marlene Dietrich's A B C. - Revised Ed. - New York : Frederick Ungar Publishing
Co., 1984. - p. 37
"It is a splendid drink and all that,
And a national drink of America,
And how about a nice cup of tea?"

S
ix veteran authors have formed a small press called BelleBooks ~ A quote from Sweet Tea
and Jesus Shoes ~ a collection of Southern short stories.
"In the south, you can't marry a man until you know how his mama makes sweet tea."

CS Lewis ~ "Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life"
"For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at
exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee
could be brought to me about eleven, so much the better. Tea should be taken in solitude …(London,
Fontana, 1955), pp 115-16."

The Dutchess of York on tea
"As long as it's hot and wet and goes down the right way, that's all that matters."

This quote is from a small book entitled "Pathways; Restful Meditations" it is Zen Haiku
translated by Gary Crounse
Strange how a teapot
Can represent at the same time
The comforts of solitude
And the pleasures of company.

Beatrix Potter
Peter was not very well during the evening.
His mother put him to bed,
and made some chamomile tea:
'One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.'

Bernard-Paul Heroux - 1900s Basque philosopher
There is no trouble so great or grave
that cannot be much diminished
by a nice cup of tea.

"Cold Tea Blues" "Pale Sun, Cresent Moon" 1994 by the Cowboy Junkies.
If I pour your cup, that is friendship.
And if I add your milk, that's manners.
But If I stop there, claiming ignorance of taste,
That is tea.

But if I measure the sugar
to satisfy your expectant tongue
then that is love,
sitting untouched, and growing cold.

T.S. Elliot, Portrait of a Lady
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea,
'Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.'

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. (1755-1825) The physiology of taste. Chapter 136.
'Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have
already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis
but delicate enjoyment.'


Lyrics from the song "BBC" by Ming Tea, from the movie "Austin Powers: International Man
of Mystery"
"Missus, will you
Make me tea, make love to me
Put on the telly to the BBC"

Attributed to both Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy Reagan
Women are like tea bags. They don't know how strong they are until they get into hot water.

Lyrics from the song, "Tea Time For Timmy," written by Raffi
It's just you and me, sippin' on tea, with Josh and Timmy . . . and Gretchen too. There's nothing else
to do; we'll drink tea, and happy we will be. Tell me all your thoughts on everything . . . I will try and
understand. Tell me all your thoughts on everything . . . I will try and understand . . . the best I can.
Hot tea in hand, talkin' 'bout everything. What could be more grand . . . than sippin' tea with these
friends? Sittin' on a porch, with the stars our only torch, hot steam fills the air, tea and friends we
share.

Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author, lexicographer.
Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who
cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
"Review of A Journal of Eight Days' Journey," in Literary Magazine, vol. 2, no. 13 (London, 1757; repr.
in Works, vol. 6, 1825).
Nonetheless, Johnson confessed in the article to being "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." James Boswell vouched for this passion in his Life of Samuel Johnson: "I
suppose no person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of that fragrant leaf than Johnson"
(entry for 1756).

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), British author. On Nothing, "On Tea" (1908).
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff
alone.

Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926), British journalist. Roundabout, "The Office Party" (1962).
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed, the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl.
It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to
anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).
Bringing down the mighty from their seats is an agreeable and necessary pastime, but no one
supposes that the mighty, having struggled so hard to get seated, will enjoy the dethronement.

from "Under Milkwood" by Dylan Thomas
And in Willy Nilly the Postman's dark and sizzling damp tea-coated misty pygmy kitchen where the
spittingcat kettles throb and hop on the range, Mrs Willy Nilly steams open Mr Mog Edwards' letter to
Miss Myfanwy Price and reads it aloud to Willy Nilly by the squint of the Spring sun through the one
sealed window running with tears, while the drugged, bedraggled hens at the back door whimper and
snivel for the lickerish bog-black tea.

T.S. Eliot, from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"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."

Emilie Barnes, "A Cozy Christmas Tea"
"Perhaps that is the true gift of a teatime celebration: It fills our cups with joy and warmth and
friendship. May the echo of the teacups' message be heard not only at Christmas, not only on special
occasions, but anytime friends come together."

Jill Dupleix, "Old Food", Allen & Unwin, Australia, 1998
"Nobody can teach you how to make the perfect cup of tea. It just happens over time. Wearing
cashmere helps, of course".

Walter Hooper
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me," said C.S. Lewis.
whilst at that moment I was pouring his tea into a very large cornish Ware cup and he was reading
Bleak House."

Irving Ceaser, "Tea for Two" - 1925
"Tea for two, and two for tea,
Me for you, and you for me"

Ralph Waldo Emerson - writing about John Quincy Adams
He is an old roué who must have sulphuric acid in his tea.

Afternoon Teas by Patricia Winchester
Read this my dears, and you will see
how to make a nice cup of tea
take teapot to kettle, not t'other way round
and when you hear that whistling sound
pour a little in the pot
just make it nice and hot.
Pour that out and put in the tea,
loose or in bags, your choice, you see.
One bag for each two cups will do
with one extra bag to make a fine brew.
Steep 3-5 minutes then pour a cup.
Then sit right down and drink it up!

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking
two cups of tea to other people's one."

From the 1986 movie 'Mona Lisa'
Hotel Waiter: What would you like?
George: Tea.
Hotel Waiter: Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong?
George: No, tea.

Attributed to both Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy Reagan
"Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!"

Sir Arthur Pinero
"Where there's tea there's hope"

Arthur Gray
"The spirit of the tea beverage is one of peace, comfort and refinement"

Okakura
"Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life."

Noel Coward
Wouldn't it be dreadfull to live in a country where they didn't have tea?"

Aleksandr Pushkin
"Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth."

John Baldrey, "Everything Stops for Tea"
"I know now why Franz Schubert
Never finished his unfinished symphony
He would have written more
but the clock struck four
And everything stopped for tea."

(Pooh's Little Instruction Book)
"A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards."

A Decent Cup of Tea by Malachi McCormick
"We can survive functional illiteracy or shattered windows of vulnerability, but not the demise of The
Decent Cup of Tea."

Muhammad my Friend from Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
Muhammad my friend
it's time to tell the world
we both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem
and on that fateful day when she was crucified
she wore Shiseido Red and we drank tea by her side...

The Guess Who ~ No Sugar Tonite
No sugar tonight in my coffee
No sugar tonight in my tea
No sugar to stand beside me
No sugar to run with me

Jethro Tull: One Brown Mouse
Smile your little smile --- take some tea with me awhile.
Brush away that black cloud from your shoulder.
Twitch your whiskers. Feel that you're really real.
Another tea-time --- another day older.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927): Three Men in a Boat
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot
think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon
it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each
cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now rise, and show your
strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature, and into life: spread
your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you,
up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"

A Timelord in a Dr. Who episode
"Just presume I'm a paradox in an anomaly, and get on with your tea."

Sting, from "Englishman in New York"
"I don't drink coffee, I take tea my dear"

The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) in "Survival" (Doctor Who) by Rona Munro
"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream.
People made of smoke and cities made of song.
Somewhere else the tea's getting cold.
Come on Ace, we've got work to do."

Mick Jagger  "Live with Me
I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Indeed, Madame, your ladyship is very sparing of your tea;
I protest the last I took was no more than water bewitched.

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898) Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6
"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice very earnestly.
"I've had nothin yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "Song Against Grocers"
But who hath seen the Grocer
Treat housemaids to his tea
Or crack a bottle of fish sauce
Or stand a man to cheese?

William Congreve (1670-1729) The Double Dealer, Epistle Dedicatory, Act 1, Scene 1
They are at the end of the gallery;
Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

William Cowper (1731-1800) "The Task"
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful ev'ning in.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Barnaby Rudge
"Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea."

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
The progress of this famous plant has been something like the progess of truth; suspected at first,
though very palatable to those who had courage to taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its
popularity seemed to spread; and establishing its triumph at last, in cheering the whole land from the
palace to the cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of time and its own virtues.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Letters and Social Aims
There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) "Love in Several Masques"
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911)
Now for the tea of our host
Now for the rollicking bun,
Now for the muffin and toast,
Now for the gay Sally Lunn!

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) "To an Insect"
Do Katydids drink tea?

Henry James (1843-1916) Portrait of a Lady
There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as
afternoon tea.

Pierre Daniel Huet (c. 1709) "Tea Elegy"
O Tea! O leaves torn from the sacred bough!
O stalk, gift born of the great gods!
What joyful region bored thee? In what part of the sky
Is the fostering earth swollen with your health, bringing increase.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) Untitled
So hear it then, my Rennie dear,
Nor hear it with a frown;
You cannot make the tea so fast
As I can gulp it down.
I therefore pray thee, Rennie dear,
That thou wilt give to me
With cream and sugar softened well,
Another dish of tea.

Lu Tung (Chinese poet during T'ang Dynasty) "Tea-Drinking"
The first cup moistens my lips and throat;
The second cup breaks my loneliness;
The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd
ideographs;
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration-all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores;
At the fifth cup I am purified;
The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals.
The seventh cup-ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my
sleeves.
Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) "Natural Theology"
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.

Louise MacNeice (1907-1963) "Les Sylphides"
So they were married-to be the more together-
And found they were never again so much together,
Divided by the morning tea,
By the evening paper,
By children and tradesmen's bills.

Thomas Babington Macauley (1800-1859) Life of Johnson
The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which
ought to be at the wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat
like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans.

John Masefield (1878-1967) "Captain Stratton's"
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French.
And some swallow tay and stuff fit only for a wench.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) "The Song of Right and Wrong"
Tea, although an Oriental
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

Gladstone (1865) Victorian British Prime Minister
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.

Sidney Smith (1711-1845) The "English Billy Graham" of his day in a letter.
Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born
before tea.

Alexander Pope (1711) The Rape of the Lock
Here thou, great Anne, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) John Company clerk, Witches and Other Night Fear
I like a tea smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the revenue-an abstraction I
never cared greatly about.
I could go out with him in his mackerel boat, or about his less ostensible business, with some
satisfaction.

English tea smuggler's ballad (1700)
Five and twenty ponies
Trotting through the dark;
Brandy for the Parson,
Baccy for the Clark,
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling,
While the gentlemen go by.

Robert Trotman (1765) Gravestone epitaph of English tea smuggler
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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) The Ballad of the Boston Tea Party
No! Ne'er was mingled such a draught
In palace, hall or arbor,
As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed
That night in Boston Harbor.

T.S. Eliot ~ The Naming of Cats
The naming of teas is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your everyday games-
Some might think you as mad as a hatter
Should you tell them each goes by several names.
For starters each tea in this world must belong
To the families Black or Green or Oolong;
Then look more closely as these family trees-
Some include Indians along with Chinese.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942), The wallet of Kai Lung.
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.

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), "The Olde Vicarage, Grantchester"
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey for the tea?

A. A. Milne (1882-1956) "Nursery Chairs, The Fourth Chair"
"Whenever I sit in a high chair
For breakfast or dinner or tea,
I try to pretend that it's my chair,
And that I am a baby of three."

Harold Monro (1879-1932) "Milk for the Cat"
When the tea is brought at five o'clock
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
Is suddenly purring there.

Barry Pain (1864-1928) "The Poets at Tea, Wordsworth"
Come little cottage girl, you seem
To want my cup of tea;
And will you take a little cream?
Now tell the truth to me!

Barry Pain (1864-1928) "The Poets at Tea, Cowper".
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.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) Letter, 1912
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.

Have a
tea quote not listed here...Please feel free to share it with others

 

Tea Info | Brewing Tea | Tea Glossary | Tea Terms | Tea Grading | Scone Recipes | Health