The Book of Tea

by Kakuzō Okakura

It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

Jonas Hanway (Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the use of tea.

It has not the arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.

Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of philosophy.

Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

three most deplorable things in the world: the spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation.

For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought.

Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.

Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes possible.

In religion the Future is behind us. In art the present is the eternal.