Quotes about tea
page 3

“Watson's childlike vision makes them seem like the creatures of a Wonderland, all at a strange contentious noisy tea-party which made room for him because for people like him, at this particular kind of party, there is always room.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

People

“One of those poor fellows that had become a Christian was badgered by his companions; and one of them said, "How do you know that Jesus Christ has forgiven your sins? " The man turned at once and said, "How do you know when you have got sugar in your tea?"”

John Bartholomew Gough (1817–1886) Anglo-American temperance orator

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 17.

Christ

“My voice does get a little gruffy every once in a while, but I've never lost it 100 percent. I do try to warm up my voice before I go out there, but it's more of a nonchalant approach to taking care of it. Just some scales - deep throat valve sounds and what-not. I never like to stress out about it or worry about teas.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Steve Knopper (January 30, 2003) "Far, Far From Utah for The Used", Newsday, Newsday Inc., p. B33.

“All the bloodshed caused by the warlike disposition of Napoleon is as nothing compared to the myriads of persons who have sunk into their graves through a misplaced confidence in the value of beef tea.”

John Milner Fothergill (1841–1888) British physician and medical writer

Quoted in Shall We Slay to Eat? https://books.google.it/books?id=WNQvAQAAMAAJ by John Harvey Kellogg, Good Health Publishing Company, 1899, p. 124.

Confidence, Personality

“The landlady had white hair. Around her neck was a high net collar fitting tightly like a corset. She was in her seventies, a tall woman who increased her height by rising on tiptoe and peering at me over her glasses…She smiled with a smile that seemed to hurt her face, cracking it open with old lines that broke up the dry flesh around her mouth and cheeks…She was lonely, and so lost and still proud. One afternoon she took me to her apartment on the top floor. It was like walking into a well-dusted tomb…For two hours she talked of Bert, and Lord! how she loved that man, even in death, but he was not dead at all; he was in that apartment, watching over her, protecting her, daring me to hurt her…The tea was old. The sugar was old and lumpish. The tea cups were dusty, and somehow the tea tasted old and the little dried up cookies tasted of death. When I got up to leave, Bert followed me through the door and down the hall, daring me to think cynically of him.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Death, Smile, Thinking

“In her heart she harbors hatred for me, but it would ruin the game if we didn't have tea. The words slither out laced with venom so vile it would pucker my face but she says it and smiles.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Do I Have To?"
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Smile, Game, Heart

“The shouting, the overrunning of the Capitol, the sneaking in of Tea Party participants into the basement of the Capitol, the name-calling, the spitting, all of that…. The Tea Party emerges as not only outrageous, but they have turned up the volume in ways that even Code Pink have not been able to do.”

Maxine Waters (1938) U.S. Representative from California

Morning Joe (31 March 2010)

Way

“I don't take drugs. I never did. All the feelings that drugs are supposed to produce in you - confidence or energy - I can produce naturally. The only problem is going to sleep. But I never take pills… I drink herbal teas.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Rocks the Land, Time, 1985-05-27 http://time.com/3724297/madonna-rocks-the-land/,

Feeling, Confidence, Drink, Nature

“We had a president, Moi, who was a dictator. He ruled the country with an iron fist, and anyone who dared question his authority was arrested, tortured, jailed or even killed. That meant that people were taught to be smart cowards, stay out of trouble. Being a coward was not an insult. Being a coward was a compliment. We used to be told that a coward goes home to his mother. What that meant: that if you stayed out of trouble you're going to stay alive. I used to question this advice, and eight years ago we had an election in Kenya, and the results were violently disputed. What followed that election was terrible violence, rape, and the killing of over 1,000 people. My work was to document the violence. As a photographer, I took thousands of images, and after two months, the two politicians came together, had a cup of tea, signed a peace agreement, and the country moved on. I was a very disturbed man because I saw the violence firsthand. I saw the killings. I saw the displacement. I met women who had been raped, and it disturbed me, but the country never spoke about it. We pretended. We all became smart cowards. We decided to stay out of trouble and not talk about it.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

Women, People, Peace, Home

“Now, there is no harm in a teapot, even if it contains tea, if it is let alone.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 12:28 (April 7, 1867)
Young discusses the Mormon prohibition against drinking coffee and tea, known as the Word of Wisdom.
1860s

“He seemed to lose interest in the subject of his daughter, glooming at a yellow card of ancient railway regulations on the wall. But when the harbingers of the coming train were audible – porters trundling, a scrambled gabble from the station announcer, frantic blowing on hot tea – he became eager again and was out swiftly on to the platform. I followed him. The train slid in. I saw the driver look down disdainful from his cosy hell, sharing – like soldier and auxiliary – a mystique with the tea-room woman. Passengers, disillusioned with arrival, got out greyly amid grey steam; passengers, hungry for the illusion of getting somewhere, jostled their way on.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way, Hell, Daughters, Training

“I was the driver's mate, delivering the bottles and beer around South Yorkshire. We used to have a pint at every stop – well the driver's mate did, not the driver, thankfully – and we used to have about 10 stops in a day. You worked so hard you didn't feel you'd drunk 10 pints by four o'clock, you used to sweat so much. But then you had to lift all the empties off the lorry. It's probably horrifying but we used to do that then go home for tea and then go out in the evening to the pub.”

William Hague (1961) British politician

Interview http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/871543.stm, GQ magazine, August 2000 Reminiscing about his days delivering soft drinks for the family firm while a teenager. The interviewer asked whether that might make 14 pints per day and Hague agreed.

Feeling, Home, Beer

“Much of my life seems in retrospect to have been spent in the company of putative national leaders passing through the process of being denounced and imprisoned for sedition, as part of the inevitable progression towards the Prime Ministership and the ritual tea-party at Windsor Castle.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

Point of Departure (London: Arthur Barker, 1967) p. 295.

Life, Parting

“What is the world that lies around our own? Shadowy, unsubstantial, and wonderful are the viewless elements, peopled with spirits powerful and viewless as the air which is their home. From the earth's earliest hour, the belief in the supernatural has been universal. At first the faith was full of poetry; for, in those days, the imagination walked the earth even as did the angels, shedding their glory around the children of men. The Chaldeans watched from their lofty towers the silent beauty of night — they saw the stars go forth on their appointed way, and deemed that they bore with them the mighty records of eternity. Each separate planet shone on some mortal birth, and as its aspect was for good or for evil, such was the aspect of the fortunes that began beneath its light. Those giant watch-towers, with their grey sages, asked of the midnight its mystery, and held its starry roll to be the chronicle of this breathing world. Time past on, angels visited the earth no more, and the divine beliefs of young imagination grew earthlier. Yet poetry lingered in the mournful murmur of the oaks of Dodona, and in the fierce war song of the flying vultures, of whom the Romans demanded tidings of conquest. But prophecy gradually sank into divination, and it is a singular proof of the extent both of human credulity and of curiosity, to note the various methods that have had the credit of forestalling the future. From the stars to a tea-cup is a fall indeed”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

Men, War, Children, People

“Some people would rather give the appearance of feeling well by having a face-lift, exercising violently, or dieting severely—but they don't solve the problem; they only disguise it. If they ate properly, they wouldn't have to strain to seem fit; they would be fit. The simplest and most natural way usually turns out to be the easiest. Consider nursing, for instance. It's obviously the most natural way to nourish a baby, but it's also the easiest; you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night and fix bottles. If you're a vegetarian, you don't have to cook food in a smelly, greasy kitchen, or clean a lot of pots and pans with the rancid grease on them. Ugh! Though it may seem easier to take a slab of dead flesh and toss it in a broiler, it's much more interesting to do something creative with vegetables. So that my children don't have to snack on sweets or bowls of cereal—it's no better than sawdust, you know—I set out platters of avocadoes, pineapples, papayas, bananas, almonds, dried figs and prunes. … I serve organic apple juice in place of milk. I have the most beautiful golden honey for the herb tea—and so, you see, no one need feel deprived on a vegetarian diet.”

Cloris Leachman (1926) American actress

Interview in The Vegetarians https://books.google.it/books?id=vK_uAAAAMAAJ by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), p. 20.

Children, People, Food, Beauty

“If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully — the life you save may be your own — and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (1992)

Love, Life, World, Law

“I've had people working for me who are film-school graduates and honestly, if they had been clapper boys or tea boys they probably would have learned more.”

Jamie Uys (1921–1996) South African film director

Sunday Times interview (1979)

People, School, Boy, Learning

“I emerged from the womb, right, I was wearing a top hat and I had a cane and said: 'Mother, that was an awkward and embarrassing birth. You should be ashamed of yourself dear. Now pull your nightie down; that doctor looks salacious.' Then I trotted off outside, met up with Kenneth Williams and we both had tea, and we looked down at our dinkles with disgust.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio One Interview, July 5th 2007

Birth

“"Wouldn't you like to come in and have a cup of tea and dry off?"
"Lady, don't you realize that we don't even have time to pull up our shorts?"
"Pull up your shorts?"
"YES, PULL UP OUR SHORTS!" I screamed at her and walked off into the wall of water.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

Water, Time

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37

Life, Children, Age, Cars

“James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great care of his mother
Though he was only three.
James James said to his mother
Mother he said, said he:
You mustn't go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me.
James James Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison's Mother
Went to the end of the town
James James Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea!”

A.A. Milne book When We Were Very Young

Source: When We Were Very Young (1924)

Time

“At the moment, money from Gombe tourism goes into one pot for Tanzania National Parks and it has to pay for the whole infrastructure of everything. But through our TACARE [community development] programme, we’ve benefited local people hugely.
The thing is about tourism and research is that they can both focus attention on the place and help to preserve it. It’s tourism involvement with the mountain gorillas that saved them.
During the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, people on both sides were being told, “Don’t touch the gorillas”, as it was the second biggest foreign exchange earner after tea in the country. So both sides hoped to win and continue exploiting gorillas.
So the government can see the value of tourism, but the danger is they over-exploit it. They say, “We’re getting all this money for [gorilla-tracking groups of] six people, now we’ll let it be 12”, and they get more money for tours, so they make it 20. That’s the danger; that they end up killing what people have come to see.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Wanderlust interview (2009)

Money, People, Hope, Mountain

“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) British poet

"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (1912), concluding lines

“Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aicha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses… were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)

Way, Lying, Sleep

“We have no proverbial tea to dump, should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports? Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

War, Hope

“When a large part of the market for British textiles was in the colonies, a fall in the price of tea and cocoa caused unemployment in Lancashire.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Economic Heresies (1971), Chapter V, Nonmonetary Models, p. 67

Parting

“Asking for the meaning of life is no different than a fortune teller casting tea leaves, chicken bones, or Tarot cards, then looking at the random mess they created and wondering what that means. Abrahamic religion offers no purpose either, apart from a Stockholm syndrome, because the best you can hope for is to be imprisoned by an indomitable despot and have to press your lips to his colon for the rest of eternity –or else suffer a fate worse than death. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Life, Death, Fate, Religion

“Somerset Maugham refers more than once to the pleasure of the Malayan morning - papaya and eggs and bacon and strong British tea taken while the air is cool and the sun awaits its sudden thrust into the green land….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Pleasure, Strong, Sun

“Already an old man, he [Samuel Johnson] ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

314.
Aes Triplex (1878)

Heart

“Things started to go downhill. Instead of singing about taking tea with Mary Jane and boppin' your dingus on ol' Sweet Slit Annie it was Help me God I don't know the meaning of life or I believe that love is gonna cure the world of psoriasis and cancer both and I'm gonna tell the people all about it 285 different ways whether you like it or not. And Why is there war well go ask the children they know everything we need to know, and Gee I sure like black folks even if my own folks don't and endless vinyl floods of drivel in similar veins. At that point I started to pack in and resort back to my good old ' 66 goof squat rock. I got out records like 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians, who were mysterious indeed, and re-whooped to jungle juju cackles like "Wooly Bully," which is indescribable and was recorded by a bunch of guys who drove around in a hearse wearing turbans.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tales of These Times" (June 1971), p. 9
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Love, Life, God, War

““Pascal’s Wager never appealed to me. It seems logically… shallow.”
“Perhaps because it posits only two choices,” said Aenea. Somewhere in the desert night, an owl made a short, sharp sound. “Spiritual resurrection and immortality or death and damnation,” she said.
“Those last two aren’t the same thing,” I said.
“No, but perhaps to someone like Blaise Pascal they were. Someone terrified of ‘the eternal silence of these infinite spaces.’”
“A spiritual agoraphobic,” I said.
Aenea laughed. The sound was so sincere and spontaneous that I could not help loving it. Her.
“Religion seems to have always offered that false duality,” she said, setting her cup of tea on a flat stone. “The silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.””

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

Love, Death, Religion, Silence

“I love nice long walks, inspirational novels of influential people. I'm reading Kennedy - An Unfinished Life at the moment. And nothing beats listening to music and having tea with friends.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

Love, Life, People, Music

“No matter how much makeup I wore, people just kept saying "Yes, sir! Would you like tea with that, sir?" "Yes, I would like tea. Why don't you put it on my breasts?" "Certainly. Tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?"”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Sexie (2003)

People

“That is my problem with life, I just rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down like I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

"The Man on the Stairs" in Fence (Spring/Summer 2004)

Life, Drink, Problem

“The Englishman without his tea fights only half-heartedly.”

José Maria Eça de Queiroz book Cartas de Inglaterra

O Inglês, sem chá, bate-se frouxamente.
"Afeganistão e Irlanda"; "Afghanistan and Ireland" p. 58.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Fight

“Picture you upon my knee,
Just tea for two and two for tea”

Irving Caesar (1895–1996) American composer and lyricist

"Tea For Two" (1925).

“Through most of colonial history, inhabitants of the 13 colonies were loyal subjects of the British crown — resourceful, dedicated and as the Third Duchess of Kent… was fond of saying, "Some tea-drinkin' motherfuckahs." In fact, whenever the subject of the New World was mentioned, the Duchess could always be counted on for a wistful head-shake and a hearty "Motherfuckahs love that motherfuckin' tea."”

Jon Stewart book America

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004)

Love, World, History

“Everybody eats something
But you won't eat me
You won't get me on your plate
Or have me over for tea
Everybody lives somewhere
Mud hut or igloo
But what I got is the hottest spot
And it's away from you”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Life is Good in the Greenhouse".
Go 2 (1978)

“We might as well have a cup of tea,’ he said, and we noisily marched over the hollow boards of the glass-covered bridge, down the stairs to Platform Four. We entered the filthy Gothic tea-room and Everett ordered. The serving-woman served us with tired distain; she treated her customers like a dull and endless film that could only, with order and money, make a very rare stereoscopic contact with her real though duller world. Everett took me to a table and began to talk sadly but eagerly.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Money, World

“I'm looking for the binding energy of a look
a crop of reflections to be reaped
in a winter of thorn
when icebergs of illusion will melt
to be served at high tea
and the spaces between the poles pinned down”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Winter

“To stroll on wharves, and in alleys and in streets and in the houses, waiting-rooms, even saloons, that is not a pleasant pastime unless for an artist. As such, one would rather be in the dirtiest place where there is something to draw, than at a tea party with charming ladies. Unless one wants to draw ladies, then a tea party is all right even for an artist.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Spring 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 34 (letter 190) 1880s, 1882

Waiting, Drawing, Housing

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Men, God, War

“I want to drink a cup of tea to all those Kennedys who went and all those Kennedys who stayed.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

While visiting his ancestral homestead in Wexford, as quoted in BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/27/newsid_4461000/4461115.stm 1963

Drink

“The Government's policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town…Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands. Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/feb/22/care-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (22 February 1984). 1980s

People, Health, Home, Support

“Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1813-09-23) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Cats, Wine, Indifference

“I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Tape transcripts (1971)

Life, Family, Dogs, Time

“A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods,
And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods.

And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale
A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail.

Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray,
Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray.

The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee;
It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928), The Wings of Lead

God, Sea, Night, Box

“We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea”

Myles Rudge (1926–2007) English songwriter and scriptwriter

Song Right Said Fred (Cup of Tea)

“Teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Peter Bell the Third (1819), Pt. III, st. 12

“Socialists try to convince us that the tea becomes sweet not because of sugar, but because of mixing.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

“Seriously! Acting in films is not my cup of tea. The joy I find in being a pucca musician is unparalleled.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

About acting in films http://web.archive.org/web/20161005115944/https://twitter.com/shreyaghoshal/status/114406431003914240

Joy

“I sat next to the Duchess at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were truly phenomenal,
And everyone thought it was me!”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

A variation with "thought" instead of feared and "abominable" instead of phenomenal is reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 132
Misattributed

Fear

“By the look of you, Nynaeve, I could almost think you were angry, but I know you have such a sweet disposition people ask you to dabble your fingers in their tea.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Thom Merrilin to Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1994)

People, Thinking

“What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

After being asked "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?" in an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)

Love, Life, Beauty, Girl

“One result of the nobility and gentry becoming more mobile and mixing more together was new kinds of parties. From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, whenever people decided to entertain, they did so in much the same way. They gave either a dinner on its own, or a dinner combined with dancing. The latter combination started with a meal, sometimes enlivened by music. After dinner the company retired to a withdrawing room, and passed an hour or so by taking tea or dessert, or playing cards, or listening to more music. They then returned to the room where they had dined, for dancing or as it tended to be called, a ball; in the early eighteenth century as few as seven couples dancing together could be described as a ball. After dancing there was normally some kind of light refreshment, and then everybody went home. The refreshments at the end might, according to the century, be described as a banquet or a supper, the room for dinner and dancing a great chamber or a saloon; the dances danced, the music played and the food eaten changed, but the pattern remained much the same. The guests did one thing at a time, and they all did it together.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

People, Food, Music, Way

“From the number of self-murderers he had known-you had to put it that way, for the fact that someone died rounded off your knowledge of that person, if only because he or she could no longer present you with surprises-he was able to conclude that his circle of acquaintance must consist of a thousand people. If he were to invite all these voluntary dead to tea, two boxes of cream cakes from Berkhof's would scarcely suffice.”

Cees Nooteboom book Rituals

Page 20
Rituals (1980)

People, Way, Knowledge, Personality

“Holy Moses I have been deceived.
Now the wind has changed direction and I'll have to leave.
Won't you please excuse my frankness, but it's not my cup of tea.
Holy Moses I have been deceived.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Border Song
Song lyrics, Elton John (1970)

Change

“Congratulations, you have been tea-bagged!”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (April 14, 2009)

“Jon Scott Ashjian … recently made a splash in news reports and Internet blogs by creating a third party, the Tea Party of Nevada, a group dedicating itself to the popular conservative movement.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party hopeful - gives voters third choice, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 8, 2010]
About

“O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

Water, Dead

“But I'm a mainstreamer. I think that, you know, when we start talking about the Tea Party, people want to marginalize that into some kind of organization or party, but it really isn't.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
2010-09-15
Sharron Angle in No Spin Zone
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
2010-09-15
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/transcript/sharron-angle-no-spin-zone?page=1

People, Thinking

“I don't much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p. m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling.”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, After You With The Pistol (1979), Ch. 5.

Drink, Thinking

“You will not find a surgeon operating you quite likable. You find a doctor trying to convince you that you are in a great shape, that you do not need an operation that you will get better by drinking teas, much more amiable. I want people to respect my work, not to like me. My goal is to have the Serbian government evaluated for what it benefited for this country using existing chances and own efforts and potentials, rather than by its smooth talk, paying court to the people and talking about its good intentions.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Politika, 25.10.2001.

People, Drink, Effort, Chance

“Which would you part with first-your tobacco, your whisky, or your religion? Your tea, or your religion? Which would you shake hands with and bid good-bye for ever-your coffee, or your religion? I should think I had disgraced the man that stands before you this day, if I loved any object on the earth better than I love my religion and my God.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 8:140 (August 5, 1860)
1860s

Love, God, Religion, Coffee

“So there was Mr. Jarvis, in the second week, in this hotel with no house party at all, and no one could speak English, except himself. He was very disappointed, too, with the skiing. […] There were no ordinary length skis. There were only mini-skis about 3 ft. long. So he did not get his skiing as he wanted to. […] He did not have the nice Swiss cakes which he was hoping for. The only cakes for tea were potato crisps and little dry nut cakes. The yodler evening consisted of one man from the locality who came in his working clothes for a little while, and sang four or five songs very quickly. […] Mr. Jarvis has only a fortnight's holiday in the year. He books it far ahead, and looks forward to it all that time. He ought to be compensated for the loss of it.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Jarvis v. Swans Tours Ltd. [1973] Q.B. 233 (C.A).
Judgments

Books, Hope, Disappointment, Loss

“I am very much obliged to my dear little George for his message - for his love at least; his duty, I suppose, was only in consequence of some hint of my favourable intentions towards him from his father or mother. I am sincerely rejoiced, however, that I ever was born, since it has been the means of procuring him a dish of tea.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1798-12-18) about her nephew George [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Love, Sincerity

“In those days, dances were dances and songs were songs. Film dances always had a semi-classical or folk element to them and songs were all about soul-stirring lyrics and haunting music. These days, they are more about technique and technology, often it's the camera that's dancing, the synthesiser that's singing. Not my cup of tea.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

Music, Soul, Singing, Dance

“When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Life, Reading, Parting

“Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a "drag" or a "bring down," you can't do business with them.”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

Junkie (1953)

Business

“On the day of the Arizona massacre, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva blamed the "Palin express." The father of Gabrielle Giffords, one of the victims, blamed "the whole Tea Party." The sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, who had failed to lock Loughner up despite repeated arrests and other contacts, blamed "the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Mud Libel" (19 January 2011) http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/01/19/mud_libel/page/full/. 2011

People, Business

“I do as I please.
Now I'm on my knees.
Your skin is something that I stir into my tea.
And I am watching you
and you are starry, starry, starry…”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

“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”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Tea For The Tillerman
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Women, Children, Wine, Singing

“The GOP is trying to co-opt the Tea Party. That is one of the reasons I did what I did. I don't see a difference between Democrats and Republicans.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Vogel, Ed, Ruling allows Ashjian to run on Tea Party of Nevada ticket, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5B, April 16, 2010]

“Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say "what kind of tea?"”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

In a widely reported post https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22Honestly,%20if%20you're%20given%20the%20choice%20between%20Armageddon%20or%20tea,%20you%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 from his Twitter account (25 February 2009) https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1250594057

“A declaratory sentence can be asserted, because it is an incomplete symbol, of indeterminate modality; while a question, a command, an invective, or any other sentence of fixed intention can no more be asserted than could my act of hewing wood or of drinking tea.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28

Drink, Question

“As one of the original founders of the modern-day Tea Party movement, I watched grassroots conservatives support Ted Cruz’s David and Goliath success against Dewhurst and the Republican establishment. Cruz has fought to repeal Obamacare, shrink the size of government; he has defended our gun rights, our right to privacy, our sovereignty and borders. I personally feel that Ted Cruz is the best choice to reverse America’s road to ruin and am proud to support him in the 2016 Republican primary.”

Dana Loesch (1978) American conservative political commentator

Dana Loesch Endorses Ted Cruz on The Dana Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HygCfYS4Iw (January 26, 2016)

Feeling, Support, Success, Personality

“Tea heads are not like junkies. A junky hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don't do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars' worth of weed. If you come right to the point, they say you are a "bring down."”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler.
Junkie (1953)

Money, Way, Light

“I would say that, whenever religion has rule over law, that madness will reign, with automatic violations of human rights, but maybe I'm being alarmist. What do they say? How can we know what sort of society they envision?.. We know that they are nearly all republicans, and that that party has been virtually assimilated by them, and we know they will speak more freely when they feel the safety of numbers. So let's look at the Republican Party platform of one of the red states, a very red state… Of course, they want to make pornography illegal (no surprises there), they also want to be able to filibuster the US senate again… Regarding the environment, they strongly support the immediate repeal and abolishment of the Endangered Species Act. Remember that these people don't believe in evolution, so they don't understand the importance of biodiversity and they don't care about the rights of animals either. They want to dominate and subdue the earth, just like their abominable doctrine demands, so they strongly oppose all efforts of environmental groups that stymie business interests, especially those of the oil and gas industry… Texas republicans not only want marriage to be restricted to one man and one woman (despite what the Bible says), but they insist it must be a natural man and a natural woman… So transgender people would be completely ostracized under the law should they get their way. There's no civil union options for gay couples either, because the platform also opposes the creation, recognition or benefits of partnerships outside marriage that are provided by some political subdivisions. As if that weren't enough, they also want to define the word "family" such that it excludes homosexual couples. They say they deplore sensitivity training (think about that for a moment), and they state very clearly that they want homosexuality condemned as unacceptable. They mean that very strongly too, so strongly in fact that they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality as a reaction of religious faith. In fact, they go so far as to urge the immediate repeal of the hate crimes law specifically where that relates to sexual orientation… If you're uncertain whether that includes acts of violence, there at least two members of the current State Board of Education who implied that it should, and we know of a few Tea Partiers who insist that homosexuals should be executed, murdered by the state. I am alarmed at how popular this abominable sentiment is… Under the heading "supporting motherhood", they strongly support women who "choose" to devote their lives to their families and raising their children, but they implicitly object to women choosing other options such as college, careers, or not having children at all. A woman's ambition beyond the confines of the kitchen and obeisance to her husband is decried by conservatives as a deplorable assault on the family which, of course, they blame on liberals. Regarding the right to life, they say that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death. Notice a few subtle caveats here: the qualifier of protecting only innocent life is how Texas republicans justify having executed more prisoners than any other state in the union, nearly five times as many as the next deadliest state in fact. Says something about Christian forgiveness, doesn't it!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Republican Theocracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjNg7nQvB0 (November 4, 2012)

Life, Death, Women, Hate

“One day, I came in and she was on the telephone. She was quite pale. She told me that I wouldn't believe what was going on. She was being watched. She said she would not be able to invite me for tea again. She was a nice Jewish lady.”

Frank Buckles (1901–2011) United States Army soldier and centenarian

On his travels to Nazi Germany in the 1930's.
Knoxville News.

“We were just making a record and suddenly it just exploded all over the world and has since become a legendary record. It’s just mad! If somebody had told me then ‘Do you realise that you are making history with this record?’ I’d have said, ‘Yeah alright, calm down and have a cup of tea’.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

Serck, Linda, Legendary producer Martin Rushent, 2009, http://www.getreading.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/2061462_legendary_producer_martin_rushent, Get Reading, 6 June 2011

World, History, Madness

“What you could do with is a nice strong cup of tea, sir. I’ll tell the kuki to make you one.’
‘Does it really do any good, Nabby? (That was better.) ‘I’ve tried every damn thing.’….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Strong

“It was there [India] I realised that engineering was not my cup of tea. I proceeded to London to look for avenues and got myself enrolled into Hornsey College of Art there. Initially, there was no hope for me, but one exhibition in 1979 made me. That proved to be extremely lucky for me.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Anish Kapoor: An unknown Indian

Hope, Art

“Get up in the morning and you like your tea milky,
You fumble for your glasses coz without 'em you cant see,
It's funny how I come round your house and I'm 20
and I still have to wear all the presents you sent me.
I walk into your kitchen everything's got a label,
you done your Christmas shopping and we're only in April.
And you wont leave the house unless your wearing your thermals,
you're covered all in cat hair and you're stinking like Strepsils,
Your heading down the Bowls Club,
have another orange squash.
Balls are rollin rollin rollin.
You can't walk right coz things aren't what they were,
your ankles are swollen swollen swollen.”

Lily Allen (1985) English singer, songwriter, actress, and television presenter

Nan You're A Window Shopper
Song lyrics, Alright, Still (2006)

Cats, Christmas, Housing

“Every Sunday, practically, we were at home to friends and guests and frequently had 20 or 30 people at the house. We mixed them all up higgledy-piggledy, young and old, people of good social position or of no position, and I believe a good time was had by all. We served cake and punch, tea and coffee, and no matter who they were everybody had to "muck in" and wash dishes and tidy up the sitting room when the day was over.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter V - Part 2

People, Home, Coffee, Time

“Not since the Black Panthers sailed into their Upper East Side tea party has there been so daffy an exercise in radical chic.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

On Mark Halperin’s inclusion of a lengthy quote by convicted murderer Jack Henry Abbott in his One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.
Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf

Exercises

“We've done great with the evangelicals. The evangelicals have been amazing. The Tea Party has been amazing and we're doing really well.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

“I will go upon the rock, boys, and look abroad for the savages," said Ishmael shortly after, advancing towards them with a mien which he intended should be conciliating, at the same time that it was authoritative. "If there is nothing to fear, we will go out on the plain; the day is too good to be lost in words, like women in the towns wrangling over their tea and sugared cakes.”

James Fenimore Cooper book The Prairie

The Prairie (1827)

Women, Fear, Boy, Time

“Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and … adore thee.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Act I, sc. i.

Life, Smile, Sex, Heart

“You have to understand the Tea-bagger mindset; they have this nostalgia for this America that they think was stolen from them, that used to be, that was better – it's really the 1950s, okay? That's what they think was Shangri-La, and, y'know what they really don't get is that it's kind of insulting to a lot of Americans to pine for this era, cause it wasn't that good for a lot of people. It was good if you were a white man. It wasn't that good if you were Mexican, or black, or Jewish, or disabled, or gay, or a woman.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

But I'm Not Wrong (2010)

People, Understanding, Thinking, Nostalgia

“[M]any Tea Party folks are going to find me, I believe, to be the ideal candidate.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Town hall event in Charleston, South Carolina, December 17, 2011, quoted in [2011-12-17, Haake, Garrett, Weinberg, Ali, Romney says he could be Tea Party's 'Ideal Candidate', msnbc.com, http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/17/9519302-romney-says-he-could-be-tea-partys-ideal-candidate?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter, 2011-12-18]
2011

“She divorced her husband, y' know. I never knew him, it was before I met Jane. Apparently she came back from work one mornin' an' found her husband in bed with the milkman. With the milkman, honest to God. Well, apparently, from that day forward Jane was a feminist. An' I've noticed, she never takes milk in her tea.”

Willy Russell Shirley Valentine

Shirley, page 13.
Shirley Valentine (1986)

God

“Now I can say that I have sampled the spectrum of the pleasure system at both ends — none and all there is — and I think the rest of my life I will dedicate myself to the middle of the road and see how that works out. Starting with the very weak tea and toast I'm going to ask you to bring me in another ten minutes or so. With maltose. But as for this other stuff, this joy thing, that I would like to begin learning about, as much as I can. I don't really know a God damned thing about it, but I understand it has something to do with sharing and caring and what did you say your name was?”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)

Life, God, Pleasure, Understanding

“Far from New England's blustering shore,
New England's worm her hulk shall bore,
And sink her in the Indian seas,
Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Monday, Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind, st. 2 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Monday

Wine, Sea

“Nowadays I hear of the princely comforts provided for national teams traveling overseas, and fuss players raise if they happen to miss even a cup of tea! When we used to travel the name of our country and the game were the only two things that mattered.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

During India’s title defense at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when he captained the hockey team to victory in the Olympics in page=59
Quote, Olympics - The India Story

Travel, Game, Country

“I am looking forward
to become humus myself
buried naked without coffin
under a beech tree planted by myself
on my land in ao tea roa. p6”

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) Austrian artist

Island of Lost Desires (1980)

Tree

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Idea, Life, God, War

“[On the Tea Party:] I like it because their view of government is essentially the same as mine, and I like it because they're regular people who, but for the shock of Obama's radicalism, probably would not have gotten active in politics.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

"The Man with the Mustache"

People

“Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament — you against me!”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"A Subaltern's Love-song" line 1, from New Bats in Old Belfries (1945).
Poetry

Sun

“If it wasn't about race, y'know, if it was really about what the Tea Party says their issue is – deficits – who ran up all that debt? Bush! Where was the Tea Party then? The two wars we put on the credit card, the prescription drug program that wasn't paid for, the tax cuts that weren't paid for, where were they then? *crickets!* But as soon as President Nosferatu took office, then, suddenly, debt is intolerable. I think there's just something they don't like about him… I cannot put my finger on what it is… Just some way he's not like them… Skinny! That's probably what it is. He's skinny, and that's why they hate him… Oh, and also that he's a Muslim socialist out to destroy America and wave his African wonder-schlong in your daughter's face.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Crazy Stupid Politics (2012)

Hate, War, Way, Thinking

“I have no need to take on the contradictions or immiscibilities between them, any more that I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipes coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. xiv
Context: The role of religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings. As each culture evolves, a unique Cosmos and Ethos appear in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the first humans, the stories, ceremonies, and art associated with our religions-of-origin are central to our matrix.
I stand in awe of these religions. I am deeply enmeshed in one of them myself. I have no need to take on the contradictions or immiscibilities between them, any more that I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipes coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies.

Quotes about tea page 3

Quotes about tea
page 3