Leslie > Leslie's Quotes

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.

"There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that's when I think life is over.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem'ry of all that --
No, no! They can't take that away from me!”
― Ira Gershwin

“Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."
"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“A cup of tea would restore my normality."

[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Screenplay]”
― Douglas Adams

“Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?”
― Neil Gaiman

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not Today. Good morning! But please come to tea -any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Good bye!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“It's still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.”
― Neil Gaiman

“If you are cold, tea will warm you;
if you are too heated, it will cool you;
If you are depressed, it will cheer you;
If you are excited, it will calm you.”
― William Ewart Gladstone

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“Would you like an adventure now, or would like to have your tea first?”
― J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards.”
― A.A. Milne

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling

“Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

“But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!”
― Agatha Christie

“Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy, doesn't try it on. ”
― Billy Connolly

“Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

“There was a proud Teapot, proud of being made of porcelain, proud of its long spout and its broad handle. It had something in front of it and behind it; the spout was in front, and the handle behind, and that was what it talked about. But it didn't mention its lid, for it was cracked and it was riveted and full of defects, and we don't talk about our defects - other people do that. The cups, the cream pitcher, the sugar bowl - in fact, the whole tea service - thought much more about the defects in the lid and talked more about it than about the sound handle and the distinguished spout. The Teapot knew this.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales

“Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.'

And what does IT live on?'

Weak tea with cream in it.'

A new difficulty came into Alice's head. `Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested.

Then it would die, of course.'

But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully.

It always happens,' said the Gnat.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

“Make tea, not war”
― Monty Python

“Sister Mary chose that moment to come in with the tea. Satanist or not, she'd also found a plate and arranged some iced biscuits on it.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch