If she speaks, it will only be a pleasant word or two; should she have anything important to say, the moment will be after tea, not before it; this she knows by instinct. – George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 1903 (of the housekeeper b

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea. I can drink any quantity when I have not tasted wine; otherwise I am haunted by blue-devils by day, and dragons by night. – Sydney Smith, quoted in A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith: Volume I by his d

The man breathed in deeply—of rosebuds and mint, of sunny meadows and salty cliffs, of streams in no hurry and the sound of bagpipes. – Ethel Pochocki, Wildflower Tea, 1993