Okakura Kakuzo Quotes About 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.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Beautiful, Dream, Tea

  Okakura Kakuzo (2000). “The Book of Tea the Illustrated Classic Edition”, p.1, Tuttle Publishing

• 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.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Beautiful, Order, Tea

  Andrew Forbes, David Henley, Okakura Kakuzo “The Illustrated Book of Tea”

• Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Medicine, Tea, Beverages

  Andrew Forbes, David Henley, Okakura Kakuzo “The Illustrated Book of Tea”

• Tea...is a religion of the art of life.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Art, Tea, Cups Of Tea

  Kakuzo Okakura (2008). “The Book of Tea”, p.43, Applewood Books

• The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism ... for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Philosophy, Men, Views

  Andrew Forbes, David Henley, Okakura Kakuzo “The Illustrated Book of Tea”

• In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Men, Understanding, Tea

  "The Book of Tea". Book by Okakura Kakuzo, 1906.

• The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Tea, May, Outsiders

  Okakura Kakuzo (2000). “The Book of Tea the Illustrated Classic Edition”, p.30, Tuttle Publishing

• Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Life, Art, Drinking

  Kakuzo Okakura (2008). “The Book of Tea”, p.43, Applewood Books

• In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely.... Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Sweet, Queens, Ivory

  Okakura Kakuzo (2000). “The Book of Tea the Illustrated Classic Edition”, p.30, Tuttle Publishing

• Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad teas, as we have good and bad paintings - generally the latter.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Art, Hands, Tea

• 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

  Japan, Small Rooms, Perfection

• Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Art, Drinking, Tea

  Okakura Kakuzo (2012). “The Book of Tea: Classic Edition”, p.21, Tuttle Publishing

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