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.

Cares melt when you kneel in your garden.

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order.

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

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.

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

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.