Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight... before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap, the coffee, the rice, to iron the pants, to braid the hair, to pull the day's water up from the well, to boil water for tea, to wash the children for school, to pull the vegetables and start the walk to market, to run to catch the bus for the work that is paid. I don't know when most women sleep!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a... morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and ... adore thee.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Grandmother, born in County Tyrone, believed as a good Irishwoman that there were only three kinds of tea fit to drink, none of th...em storebought. The first quality was kept, sensibly enough, in China. The second picking was sent directly to Ireland. The third and lowest grade went, of course, to the benighted British. And all the tea used in our house came once a year, in one or two beautiful soldered tin boxes, from Dublin. Then only would we know it to be second to what the Dowager Empress of China was drinking, while the other Old Lady in Buckingham Palace sipped our dregs, as served her right. ...My grandmother died before tea bags. I am grateful. My mother never admitted their existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »