Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage.

A garden is a friend you can visit any time.

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.

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.

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

Cares melt when you kneel in your garden.

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