QuoteProject
Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad teas, as we have good and bad paintings - generally the latter.
Okakura Kakuzo
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Tea, like art, requires skill and mastery to reveal its best qualities.

Okakura Kakuzo compares the preparation of tea to the creation of art, asserting that both require a master to unlock their fullest potential. Just as paintings can vary in quality, so too can teas, indicating that the appreciation and execution of both necessitate expertise and discernment.

Themes

TeaArtMasteryQualitiesPainting

In practice

Example use cases

I often share the quote about tea being a work of art during my tea-tasting workshops.

More from Okakura Kakuzo

Tea...is a religion of the art of life.
Okakura KakuzoRead
Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.
Okakura KakuzoRead
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.
Okakura KakuzoRead
Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
Okakura KakuzoRead
For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal. The tiny incidents of daily rouitine are as much a commentary of racial ideas as the highest flight of philosophy or poetry.
Okakura KakuzoRead
The ancient sages never put their teachings in a systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise.
Okakura KakuzoRead

Similar quotes

There is no must in art because art is free.
Wassily KandinskyRead
It occurred to me that every work of art is a synecdoche, there's no way around it. Every creative work that someone does can only represent an aspect of the whole of something. I can't think of an exception to that.
Charlie KaufmanRead
For many years, I've always been attached to what they call the Great American Songbook, and Kern was a great leader of that because he had the classical training of Europe. He impressed all the greatest composers, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. They couldn't believe he was writing the songs he was writing.
Tony BennettRead
I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
Ingmar BergmanRead
If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.
Bruce SterlingRead
At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.
Aldo LeopoldRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Okakura Kakuzo | QuoteProject