Tea Quotes in Books/Literature

Share quotes about tea that you find in books or other literature.

"Come along inside . . . . We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place." The Wind in the Willows

". . . it's always tea time . . ." Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

This one is from an author:

"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The worst that the world has to offer, the greatest killers that man has ever seen, sit and drink builder’s tea from polystyrene cups, and the night is silent in their presence.”
- Stray Souls

The Godmother speaking) “Agnes, will you pass me my teacup? It seems that I am about to die; and I would like a little more tea.”

Nettle & Bone

"Tomorrow (Dec. 16) is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. As George Banks recalls in 'Mary Poppins': While the ships lay in Boston Harbor, a party of colonists dressed as Indians boarded the vessels, 'behaved very rudely, and threw all the tea overboard, making the tea unsuitable for drinking. Even for Americans.'"
Ron Charles, Dec. 15, 2023 issue of Washington Post's "Book Club" newsletter

From The African Queen, by C.S. Forester:

"What about a cup o' tea, Miss?"

Tea! Heat and thirst and fatigue and excitement had done their worst for Rose. She was limp and weary, and her throat ached. The imminent prospect of a cup of tea roused her to trembling excitement. Twelve cups of tea, each, Samuel and she had drunk daily for years. To-day she had had none -- she had eaten no food either, but at the moment that meant nothing to her. Tea! A cup of tea! Two cups of tea! Half a dozen great mugs of tea, strong, delicious, revivifying! Her mind was suffused with rosy pictures of an evening's tea drinking, a debauch compared with which the spring sowing festivities at the village by the mission station were only a pale shade.

"I'd like a cup of tea," she said.

Delete. Wrong thread.

>7 lilithcat: I remember that scene.

I am reading Steeped in Malice by Vicki Delany I won from LT or GR. A cozy mystery.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is set in a Chinese tea house in SF. Plenty of tea quotes within.

William Cowper's The Task:

"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."

And of course the GOM's

"If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you."

I haven't been able to pin down where he said that though.

>13 DuncanHill: Who is GOM?

>14 TempleCat: The GOM = The Grand Old Man, William Ewart Gladstone.

J. M. Barrie - Peter Pan

"Would you like an adventure, or would you like to have your tea first?"

I vote for the tea.

"Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept." - Frances Hardinge