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.

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

In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe.

True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally complete the incomplete.

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

Friends are flowers in life's garden.

It is not the accumulation of extraneous knowledge, but the realization of the self within, that constitutes true progress.