In the dell in our garden
My dolls and I take tea,
And days when I have raisins
The catbirds dine with me
-Elisabeth Merrill
It is getting to be quite homely to me -- this room --
especially when I come back to it by firelight
and find the kettle boiling. How I love kettles.
-C.S. Lewis
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
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 toast and tea.
-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
They were sitting at one of the tables now,
where Daphne had put out tea things, a cuppa being
the true Englishman's cure for everything,
from tired feet to mass murder.
- Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief
Come, let us have some tea
and continue to talk about happy things.
-Chaim Potok, The Chosen
"Just presume I'm a paradox in an anomaly,
and get on with your tea."
--A Timelord in a Dr. Who episode
"I don't drink coffee, I take tea my dear"
--Sting, from "Englishman in New York"
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
--Abraham Lincoln
It snowed last year too:
I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down
and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
From Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales"
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
Jean Luc Picard, star date 41697.9
It frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day.
Lewis Carroll
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898),
"The Hunting of the Snark," Stanza
"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone,
"so I can't take more."
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6
Twinkle, twinkle little bat How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Lewis Caroll Ibid., Chapter 7
"Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea --
a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie.
They sat before the fire on a bench
and looked sideways at one another.
Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's hand, holding the tea-cup, was very very brown,
and very very wrinkly with the soap-suds; and all through her gown
and her cap, there were hair-pins sticking wrong end out; so that
Lucie didn't like to sit too near her."
Beatrix Potter, The tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
What a nice time you are having,
going to so many tea parties!
Beatrix Potter in a letter to a small friend, 1897
Mr. Wilfred Parker invited us both out to tea,
on the strength, I feel, of our hats.
a Victorian woman's diary note
It has been said that a tea taster, like a poet, is born, not made.
William H. Ukers in "All About Tea"
They were seated around a table,
drinking tea and talking of love.
Heinrich Heine
In tea you should slightly taste the sugar,
be sensible of a balmy softness in the milk,
and enjoy at once a solidity. . .
and a fragrance in the tea.
Leigh Hunt
Tea gives life new charm.
Vintage tea advertisement
Tea is the ultimate form of hospitality.
Amy Vanderbilt
Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.
Catherine Douzel
After tea was always the best time
for a country walk on a summer's day. . .
Joan Parry Dutton
It was delightful -- this business of having tea --
and she always had delicious things to eat..."
Katherine Mansfield
. . .A tea ceremony is a communion of feeling,
when good friends come together
at the right moment under the best conditions.
Yasunari Kawabata
The story of tea is a fascinating blend of fact and fiction,
infused through the ages,
and sweetened by the triumph of human enterprise.
Anonymous
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet for auld lang syne!
Robert Burns
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.
William Cowper (1731-1800) "The Task"
...On Wednesdays I go shoppin'
And have buttered scones for tea...
Terry Jones & Michael Palin, "The Lumberjack Song"
"Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea."
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Barnaby Rudge
Do Katydids drink tea?
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) "To an Insect"
There are few hours in life more agreeable than
the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
Henry James (1843-1916) Portrait of a Lady
James James Morrison's Mother Said to herself, said she:
"I can get right down to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea."
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) "Disobedience"
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.
Harold Monro (1879-1932) "Milk for the Cat"
