The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.
ATTRIBUTION:
Lu Yu (d. 804), Chinese sage, hermit. Quoted in Jason Goodwin, The Gunpowder Gardens, introduction (1990).
