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Okakura Kakuzo Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade- all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.

Okakura Kakuzo
Design, Sides, Thread
Okakura Kakuzo (2012). “The Book of Tea: Classic Edition”, p.22, Tuttle Publishing

Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.

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

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

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

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